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Chimpanzees demonstrate a behavioural signature of human joint action
Title / Series / Name
Cognition
Publication Volume
246
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Cooperative Behavior
Humans
Pan troglodytes/psychology
Behavior, Animal
Cooperative Behavior
Humans
Pan troglodytes/psychology
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27943
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.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2024-05-01
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105747