| 研究実績の概要 |
I have been conducting a study of interactional synchrony in chimpanzees under two different experimental setups: side-by-side and face-to-face setup. In this fiscal year, I reported the findings from the side-by-side setup (Yu & Tomonaga, in press). The paper demonstrated that a finger tapping task is one potential method for investigating interactional synchrony in chimpanzees under a laboratory setting. Considering that the previous studies are mostly from anecdotes, the current study has significance for its methodology.
I continued an experimental study under face-to-face setup. In comparison with the findings from the side-by-side setup, I found a stronger tendency of interactional synchrony between pairs of chimpanzees in the face-to-face setup. This suggested that both auditory and visual information of the partner’s movement is important to facilitate interactional synchrony in chimpanzees. Moreover, I found a general tendency that synchronized tapping movement occurs by significant tapping change by at least one individual of each pair. This finding was notable because humans are known to couple their movement in a mutual way. This significant difference between humans and chimpanzees will help us to understand evolutionary significance of interactional synchrony, a target behavior of the current study. The findings were presented in several conferences, including two international conferences.
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