![]() ![]() A relevant finding in this context is that children’s abilities to coordinate with peers are also correlated with language proficiency 25, indicating that there is a link between language and joint action capabilities 26.Īlthough this may be taken to suggest that chimpanzees have low communication abilities in general, the apparent lack of evidence for communication for joint action coordination does not reflect a lack of communicative abilities. This is in a sharp contrast to human children, who readily employ communication to solve similar coordination problems starting from an early age 15, 23, 24. Thus, it is unclear whether chimpanzees were communicating or whether the uninformed partner used the position of her partner to decide which box to open. Instead, information about the tool location was primarily transferred by the informed individual approaching the target box. Although recently Melis & Tomasello 22 reported that pairs of chimpanzees established a successful coordination by communication, they did not observe any gestures between partners. Common to these experimental studies is the finding that chimpanzees either don’t use communication to coordinate 18, 21, or that communication for coordination is rare 14, 15. Several experimental studies in captivity have demonstrated that chimpanzees can solve various coordination problems 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. In the present study we investigated the joint action coordination abilities and their social-cognitive underpinnings in one of our closest phylogenetic relatives, chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes).Ĭhimpanzees in their natural habitats constantly face coordination and cooperation problems, such as hunting together 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, teaming up with others during conflicts 10, 11 or simply traveling together 12, 13. Therefore, it is a crucial question which precursors of joint action coordination are already present in other species and which joint action skills (if any) are only present in humans. ![]() In this way joint actions are a major building block of human culture 4. By coordinating their actions individuals can achieve things they would never be able to achieve alone. The ability to coordinate joint actions through communicative means has been available to human groups and, hypothetically, was available to its immediate ancestors from Homo genus 1, 2, 3. Joint coordinated action constitutes a prominent and distinctive aspect of social cognition. Our results suggest that at least in some contexts chimpanzees can exhibit communicative behaviors to sustain coordination in joint action. The frequency of gesturing was significantly higher in these test trials than in the regular trials. To address the question whether these gestures were produced to sustain coordination, we introduced a joint test condition in which we simulated a coordination break-down scenario: subjects appeared either unwilling or unable to return the target to their partner. During the joint practice of the game some subjects exhibited spontaneous gesturing. We presented five pairs of chimpanzees with a turn-taking coordination game, where the task was to send a virtual target from one computer display to another using two touch-screens. Here, we investigated how pairs of chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes) solved a problem of dynamically coordinating their actions for achieving a joint goal. On the other hand, evidence of communication in the context of coordination problems is scarce. On the one hand, it has been shown that chimpanzees in the wild and in captivity can solve various coordination problems. ![]() Recent years have seen a growing interest in the question of whether and how groups of nonhuman primates coordinate their behaviors for mutual benefit. ![]()
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