Chimpanzee Coordination and Potential Communication in a Two-touchscreen Turn-taking Game

Pavel V Voinov,Günther Knoblich,Marina Oshkina,Josep Call,Matthias Allritz

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-60307-9

Pavel V Voinov, Günther Knoblich + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60307-9

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Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the question of whether and how groups of nonhuman primates coordinate their behaviors for mutual benefit. On the one hand, it has been shown that chimpanzees in the wild and in captivity can solve various coordination problems. On the other hand, evidence of communication in the context of coordination problems is scarce. Here, we investigated how pairs of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) solved a problem of dynamically coordinating their actions for achieving a joint goal. 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. During the joint practice of the game some subjects exhibited spontaneous gesturing. 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. The frequency of gesturing was significantly higher in these test trials than in the regular trials. Our results suggest that at least in some contexts chimpanzees can exhibit communicative behaviors to sustain coordination in joint action.

Highlights

Joint coordinated action constitutes a prominent and distinctive aspect of social cognition
Several experimental studies in captivity have demonstrated that chimpanzees can solve various coordination problems[14,15,16,17,18,19,20]
Information about the tool location was primarily transferred by the informed individual approaching the target box. It is unclear whether chimpanzees were communicating or whether the uninformed partner used the position of her partner to decide which box to open. 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]

Summary

Introduction

Joint coordinated action constitutes a prominent and distinctive aspect of social cognition. Several studies have suggested that gestures and vocalizations can be used in great apes to modulate (or coordinate) social interactions[29,45,48], such as play behavior or grooming[49] Taking these facts together, it is puzzling that these varied communicative abilities are rarely utilized in a situation of joint action, where two or more individuals need to coordinate their individual actions for achieving the joint goal. We developed a novel approach to investigate the role of communication for joint action coordination in non-human primates: Chimpanzees learnt to play a turn-taking game, where the shared goal was to move a virtual target from one computer screen to another. From their third year of life, children can coordinate taking turns with peers for achieving joint goals[52], and they start communicating to repair coordination in turn-taking interactions with adults by the end of their first year of life[53]

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