Unpeeling the layers of language : Bonobos and chimpanzees engage in cooperative turn-taking sequences

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2016
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Fröhlich, Marlen
Kuchenbuch, Paul
Müller, Gudrun
Furuichi, Takeshi
Wittig, Roman M.
Pika, Simone
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Scientific Reports ; 6 (2016). - 25887. - Springer Nature. - eISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
Human language is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise, embodying fast-paced and extended social interactions. It has been suggested that it evolved as part of a larger adaptation of humans' species-unique forms of cooperation. Although our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, show general cooperative abilities, their communicative interactions seem to lack the cooperative nature of human conversation. Here, we revisited this claim by conducting the first systematic comparison of communicative interactions in mother-infant dyads living in two different communities of bonobos (LuiKotale, DRC; Wamba, DRC) and chimpanzees (Taï South, Côte d'Ivoire; Kanyawara, Uganda) in the wild. Focusing on the communicative function of joint-travel-initiation, we applied parameters of conversation analysis to gestural exchanges between mothers and infants. Results showed that communicative exchanges in both species resemble cooperative turn-taking sequences in human conversation. While bonobos consistently addressed the recipient via gaze before signal initiation and used so-called overlapping responses, chimpanzees engaged in more extended negotiations, involving frequent response waiting and gestural sequences. Our results thus strengthen the hypothesis that interactional intelligence paved the way to the cooperative endeavour of human language and suggest that social matrices highly impact upon communication styles.
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570 Biosciences, Biology
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ISO 690FRÖHLICH, Marlen, Paul KUCHENBUCH, Gudrun MÜLLER, Barbara FRUTH, Takeshi FURUICHI, Roman M. WITTIG, Simone PIKA, 2016. Unpeeling the layers of language : Bonobos and chimpanzees engage in cooperative turn-taking sequences. In: Scientific Reports. Springer Nature. 6, 25887. eISSN 2045-2322. Available under: doi: 10.1038/srep25887
BibTex
@article{Frohlich2016Unpee-56924,
  year={2016},
  doi={10.1038/srep25887},
  title={Unpeeling the layers of language : Bonobos and chimpanzees engage in cooperative turn-taking sequences},
  volume={6},
  journal={Scientific Reports},
  author={Fröhlich, Marlen and Kuchenbuch, Paul and Müller, Gudrun and Fruth, Barbara and Furuichi, Takeshi and Wittig, Roman M. and Pika, Simone},
  note={Article Number: 25887}
}
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