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Amy-Weeks 5&6

For the last two weeks of my research intern, I worked on a project on the origin of social bonding
through shared experience with Wouter, a grad student in our lab, in addition to previous projects that I
have been working on. Since the experiment section of the study requires observing chimpanzees,
Wouter actually went to Africa to collect the data by recording the chimpanzees on video during the trials.


Though the study aims to observe both kids and chimpanzees, the design of experiment is the same.
The study has two conditions for both situations: the first one is joint attention (JA) condition, in which
partners (either kid and experimenter or two chimpanzees) look at the same screen, while the second
one is disjoint attention (DA) condition, in which partners look at different screens or somewhere else.
Then we would observe if the participants in JA set-up would be more likely to be near their interaction
partners after watching the video. It turned out that chimpanzees were not only more likely to approach
to their interaction partners, but also did it faster after JA condition than they did in DA condition. While I
was coding their behaviors, it was intriguing to see the contrast between JA condition and DA condition:
while two chimpanzees could fight with each other in DA, they could become quiet and even stay in the
same room for a long time in JA. Though my research comes to an end,I’m still grateful for this
experience and everyone who made this experience possible.

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