Experts confirm chimpanzees interrupt each other, gesticulating wildly just like humans [View all]

Experts confirm chimpanzees interrupt each other, gesticulating wildly just like humans
That's not the only conversational similarity the primates share with humans

By Matthew Rozsa
Staff Writer
Published July 27, 2024 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) When people talk to each other, their conversations usually include many fast twists. Humans do not naturally talk in Shakespearean soliloquies, but by regularly interrupting and wildly gesticulating. The conventional wisdom is that our chats will take major turns roughly every 200 milliseconds — and new research in the journal Current Biology reveals that chimpanzees do the same thing.

"Chimpanzees also engage in rapid signal-to-signal turn-taking during face-to-face gestural exchanges" to roughly the same extent as humans, the authors write. "This correspondence between human and chimpanzee face-to-face communication points to shared underlying rules in communication." The authors speculate that this could be due to chimpanzees and humans sharing the same ancestors or because they coincidentally developed similar strategies for coordinating interactions and managing competition to communicate.

The scientists learned this by gathering data on chimpanzee “conversations” across five wild communities in East Africa, ultimately including more than 8,500 gestures for 252 individuals. The scientists specifically focused on the turn-taking and conversational patterns of their chimpanzee subjects. Ultimately they learned that 14% of communicative interactions included multiple exchanges — from as few as two individuals to as many as seven — of gesticulation and interruption.

Study co-author Dr. Catherine Hobaiter, who works at the University of St. Andrews' School of Psychology and Neuroscience, observed this directly during her research. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/27/chimpanzees-interrupt-conversation/