Potential evidence of reengagement attempts following interruptions of a triadic social game in bonobos and chimpanzees

When humans engage in joint action, they seem to so with an underlying sense of joint commitment, a feeling of mutual obligation towards their partner and a shared goal. Whether our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, experience and understand joint commitment in the same way is subject to debate. Crucial evidence concerns how participants respond to interruptions of joint actions, particularly if they protest or attempt to reengage their reluctant or distracted partners. During dyadic interactions, bonobos and chimpanzees exhibit evidence of reengagement following interruptions of naturalistic joint activities with conspecifics, according to recent studies. Yet, data are still inconsistent for triadic games, where two social partners engage with each other socially by focusing on a common object. We addressed this issue by engaging N=23 apes (5 adult chimpanzees, 5 infant bonobos, 13 adult bonobos) in a “tug-of-war” game with a human experimenter who abruptly stopped playing. Following interruptions, adult apes readily produced communicative signals towards the experimenter (>60% of subjects on first trial), which we interpreted as reengagement attempts of their passive social partner, with no group differences in this respect. Infant bonobos, by contrast, communicated rarely with the experimenters compared to adult bonobos, and never during their first trial. Crucially, when infant bonobos signaled to passive partners, they predominantly used tactile signals, but rarely exhibited behaviors related to the game, which were instead commonly seen in adults. It is thus possible that bonobos and chimpanzees share some of the basic motivational foundations for joint commitment, yet that this capacity is subject to developmental effects.