Interactional synchrony in chimpanzees: Examination through a finger-tapping experiment

Abstract

Humans often unconsciously coordinate behaviour with that of others in daily life. This interpersonal coordination, including mimicry and interactional synchrony, has been suggested to play a fundamental role in social interaction. If this coordinative behavior is socially adaptive, it may be shared with other highly social animal species. The current study targeted chimpanzees, which phylogenetically are the closest living relatives of humans and live in complex social groups, and examined whether interactional synchrony would emerge in pairs of chimpanzees when auditory information about a partner’s movement was provided. A finger-tapping task was introduced via touch panels to elicit repetitive and rhythmic movement from each chimpanzee. We found that one of four chimpanzees produced significant changes in both tapping tempo and timing of the tapping relative to its partner’s tap when auditory sounds were provided. Although the current results may have limitations in generalizing to chimpanzees as a species, we suggest that a finger-tapping task is one potential method to investigate interactional synchrony in chimpanzees under a laboratory setup.

Editorial: The Evolution of Rhythm Cognition: Timing in Music and Speech

“…Common foci are the relationship between synchronization and prosociality (Gebauer et al, 2016; Reddish et al, 2016; Rennung and Göritz, 2016; Tunçgenç and Cohen, 2016; Cirelli et al, 2017), and different forms of rhythmic behaviors in interaction (Large and Gray, 2015; Ravignani, 2015; Yu and Tomonaga, 2015; Ellamil et al, 2016; Gebauer et al, 2016; Greenfield et al, 2016; Moore et al, 2016; Schirmer et al, 2016; Wallot et al, 2016; Murphy and Schul, 2017). …”

Evolution of temporal interaction: A comparative approach to social timing

“…Social interaction is indispensable to trigger synchronous sound production in many species of insects, frogs, and crustaceans (e.g. Ravignani, Bowling, & Fitch, 2014;Ravignani & Cook, 2016) and can boost timing accuracy in chimpanzees synchronizing their movements to sound (Yu & Tomonaga, 2015). These behaviours echo the Socio-Temporal Brain hypothesis proposed for humans (Schirmer et al, 2016).…”

The Evolution of Rhythm Cognition: Timing in Music and Speech

“…(1) developmental studies of rhythm that are useful in understanding whether rhythm perception and production involve critical acquisition periods, or instead result mostly from enculturation during the whole lifespan (Hannon and Trehub, 2005), (2) comparative and cross-cultural studies of rhythm that serve to explain whether musical enculturation or exposure to specific languages can affect which specific rhythmic patterns can be produced/perceived and how frequently (Greenberg et al, 1978;Rzeszutek et al, 2012), (3) comparisons of rhythm processing in music and speech, at both behavioral and neural levels that help understanding whether common music-speech networks exist and similar behavioral patterns can be observed when humans engage in music and speech production, (4) evidence and comparison of rhythm processing across modalities and domains that are used to understand whether, for instance, metrical expectation in speech is strictly bound to the speech domain or instead recruits the same capacities for metricality available in music, or even in dance and vision (Iversen et al, 2015), (5) studies of rhythm in interaction and context (Yu and Tomonaga, 2015), explaining how social, affective, and other factors affect the emergence of rhythmic patterns, (6) archaeological findings trying to reconstruct rhythmrelated behavior and cognition in our early hominid ancestors (Morley, 2003), (7) mathematical and computational models (e.g., connectionist, symbolic) of the mechanisms underlying perception and production of rhythmic behavior (Desain and Honing, 1989, 1991, 2003, (8) mathematical and computational models of rhythmic capacities as evolved behaviors (Miranda et al, 2003) in line with a long tradition in evolutionary and theoretical biology, (9) evidence of spontaneous rhythmic behavior in other animals (Fuhrmann et al, 2014;Ravignani et al, 2014a) showing how similar rhythmic traits can evolve via similar pressures in phylogenetically distant species, (10) controlled experiments in non-human animals (Cook et al, 2013) probing the potential for producing/perceiving rhythm (even though these are not usually part of these species' natural behavior); these experiments can show the existence of basic, evolutionary conserved cognitive processes that may have been exapted in humans for rhythmic purposes.…”

“…The relationship between rhythm and sociality has seen a steady increase in research and has probably been the most investigated topic over the last 2 years (Large and Gray, 2015;Yu and Tomonaga, 2015;Ellamil et al, 2016;Gebauer et al, 2016;Greenfield et al, 2016;Moore et al, 2016;Reddish et al, 2016;Rennung and Göritz, 2016;Schirmer et al, 2016;Tunçgenç and Cohen, 2016;Wallot et al, 2016;Bishop and Goebl, 2017;Chang et al, 2017;Cirelli et al, 2017;Hannon et al, 2017;Knight et al, 2017;Mogan et al, 2017;Murphy and Schul, 2017;Rorato et al, 2017;Myers et al). Common foci are the relationship between synchronization and prosociality (Gebauer et al, 2016;Reddish et al, 2016;Rennung and Göritz, 2016;Tunçgenç and Cohen, 2016;Cirelli et al, 2017), and different forms of rhythmic behaviors in interaction (Large and Gray, 2015;Ravignani, 2015;Yu and Tomonaga, 2015;Ellamil et al, 2016;Gebauer et al, 2016;Greenfield et al, 2016;Moore et al, 2016;Schirmer et al, 2016;Wallot et al, 2016;Murphy and Schul, 2017).…”

“…Common foci are the relationship between synchronization and prosociality (Gebauer et al, 2016;Reddish et al, 2016;Rennung and Göritz, 2016;Tunçgenç and Cohen, 2016;Cirelli et al, 2017), and different forms of rhythmic behaviors in interaction (Large and Gray, 2015;Ravignani, 2015;Yu and Tomonaga, 2015;Ellamil et al, 2016;Gebauer et al, 2016;Greenfield et al, 2016;Moore et al, 2016;Schirmer et al, 2016;Wallot et al, 2016;Murphy and Schul, 2017).…”