Chimpanzees’ computer performance varies if they have an audience

Nov. 8 () –

Scientists have discovered that the performance of chimpanzees on computer tasks is influenced by the number of people who observe them and publish their findings on the Internet. iScience magazine.

When people have an audience watching them, their performance can change for the better or the worse. The new study suggests that this ““audience effect” It predates the development of reputation-based human societies, researchers say.

“It was very surprising to discover that chimpanzees are affected in their performance on tasks by audience members, and yet by human audience members” says Christen Lin of Kyoto University in Japan. “One might not expect a chimpanzee to be especially concerned if another species is watching them perform a task, but the fact that they seem to be affected by human audiences even depending on the difficulty of the task suggests that this relationship is more complex than we would have initially expected.”

The researchers, including Shinya Yamamoto and Akiho Muramatsu, wanted to find out whether the audience effect, often attributed in humans to reputation management, could also exist in a non-human primate. They knew that people pay attention to who is watching them, sometimes even unconsciously, in ways that affect their performance. Although chimpanzees live in hierarchical societies, It was unclear to what extent they, too, might be influenced by those observing them.

“Our study site is special because chimpanzees frequently interact with humans and even enjoy their company, participating almost daily in various touch-screen experiments to obtain food rewards,” says Muramatsu. “Therefore, we saw the opportunity to not only explore possible similarities in audience-related effects, but also to do so in the context of chimpanzees that share unique bonds with humans“.

The researchers made the discovery after analyzing thousands of sessions in which chimpanzees completed a touch-screen task over six years. They found that in three different number-based tasks, chimpanzees performed better on the more difficult task as the number of experimenters observing them increased. In contrast, they also found that, on the easier task, the chimpanzees performed worse when they were observed by more experimenters or other familiar people.

The researchers note that it is still unclear what specific mechanisms underlie these audience-related effects, even in the case of humans. They suggest that further study in non-human apes may offer more information about how this trait evolved and why it developed.

“Our findings suggest that the degree of concern humans have for witnesses and audience members may not be so specific to our species,” Yamamoto says. “These characteristics are a fundamental part of how our societies rely heavily on reputation, and if chimpanzees also pay close attention to audience members while performing their tasks, it stands to reason that these audience-based characteristics could have evolved before reputation-based societies emerged in our great ape lineage“.