Cooperative activities in young children and chimpanzees

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00895.x Byline: Felix Warneken (1), Frances Chen (1), Michael Tomasello (1) Abstract: Human children 18-24 months of age and 3 young chimpanzees interacted in 4 cooperative activities with a human adult partner. The human children successfully participated in cooperative problem-solving activities and social games, whereas the chimpanzees were uninterested in the social games. As an experimental manipulation, in each task the adult partner stopped participating at a specific point during the activity. All children produced at least one communicative attempt to reengage him, perhaps suggesting that they were trying to reinstate a shared goal. No chimpanzee ever made any communicative attempt to reengage the partner. These results are interpreted as evidence for a uniquely human form of cooperative activity involving shared intentionality that emerges in the second year of life. Author Affiliation: (1)Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Article note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Felix Warneken, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic mail may be sent to warneken@eva.mpg.de.