Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University.
Sci Rep. 2013;3:1566. doi: 10.1038/srep01566.
Humans actively use behavioral synchrony such as dancing and singing when they intend to make affiliative relationships. Such advanced synchronous movement occurs even unconsciously when we hear rhythmically complex music. A foundation for this tendency may be an evolutionary adaptation for group living but evolutionary origins of human synchronous activity is unclear. Here we show the first evidence that a member of our closest living relatives, a chimpanzee, spontaneously synchronizes her movement with an auditory rhythm: After a training to tap illuminated keys on an electric keyboard, one chimpanzee spontaneously aligned her tapping with the sound when she heard an isochronous distractor sound. This result indicates that sensitivity to, and tendency toward synchronous movement with an auditory rhythm exist in chimpanzees, although humans may have expanded it to unique forms of auditory and visual communication during the course of human evolution.
人类在建立亲密关系时，会积极地通过跳舞和唱歌等行为同步，即使在无意识的情况下听到节奏复杂的音乐，也会做出这种高级的同步运动。这种倾向的基础可能是为了适应群体生活而进化而来的，但人类同步活动的进化起源尚不清楚。在这里，我们首次证明了与人类关系最密切的亲属之一——黑猩猩，会自发地使自己的动作与听觉节奏同步：在接受了一项敲击点亮的电钢琴键的训练后，一只黑猩猩在听到等时分散注意力的声音时，会自发地使自己的敲击与声音同步。这一结果表明，黑猩猩对听觉节奏的敏感性以及与听觉节奏同步的倾向是存在的，尽管人类可能在人类进化过程中，将其扩展到了独特的听觉和视觉交流形式中。
