Chimpanzees demonstrate a behavioural signature of human joint action

Abstract

The strength of human society can largely be attributed to the tendency to work together to achieve outcomes that are not possible alone. Effective social coordination benefits from mentally representing a partner's actions. Specifically, humans optimize social coordination by forming internal action models adapted to joint rather than individual task demands. To what extent do humans share the cognitive mechanisms that support optimal human coordination and collaboration with other species? An ecologically inspired joint handover-to-retrieve task was systematically manipulated across several experiments to assess whether joint action planning in chimpanzees reflects similar patterns to humans. Chimpanzees' chosen handover locations shifted towards the location of the experimenter's free or unobstructed hand, suggesting they represent the constraints of the joint task even though their individual half of the task was unobstructed. These findings indicate that chimpanzees and humans may share common cognitive mechanisms or predispositions that support joint action.