孩子比猩猩更喜欢团队协作

    十月份的一份报告指出：虽然猩猩是社会动物，但它们并不偏爱与其他家伙协作。与此相反，孩子们更愿意合作。

Chimpanzees and humans are fairly close cousins, evolutionarily speaking. But a new study finds they lack something that we have (besides written language and hairlessness): a desire to work together.

     从进化论的观点来看，黑猩猩和人是近亲。但一份最新的研究表明——它们缺少我们拥有的一些东西（除了文字和乏毛）——合作的意愿。
  

When all other things are equal, 3-year-old children prefer to do a task collaboratively rather than alone, while chimpanzees show no such preference, said study researcher Yvonne Rekers, a cognitive scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany."We expected that difference between human and chimpanzee cooperation, because we can see it nowadays," Rekers told LiveScience. "Humans collaborate in a larger variety of contexts and in more complex forms."However, that leaves the question: Why these differences in cooperation ? Cognitive abilities may be at the root of some of them, Rekers said, but motivation could matter as well.

    当所有客观条件一致，3岁的孩子相比单独行动更喜欢合作做任务。然而黑猩猩没有这个偏好，来自德国马克斯·普朗克人类进化研究院认知学家伊冯雷卡斯说道。我们预料到人类和黑猩猩有关合作的差异性，毕竟现在两者已经不一样了。在广泛的环境中，各种合作形式下，人类展开合作。但也留下一个问题：为什么两者在合作上产生了不同？认知能力也许是其中一个根源，雷卡斯同时指出，动机也可能产生影响。

To investigate the motivations of both species, the researchers chose a task that both groups would willingly undertake: pulling a rope to get a food reward. The children in the study got gummy frogs as their treat, while the chimpanzees got bananas.

    为了研究两种物种的动机，研究者挑选了双方都乐于接受的任务：拉绳奖食物。学童得到活蹦乱跳、黏黏的青蛙作为回报，猩猩则得到香蕉。

Fifteen chimps and 24 children were introduced to the same experimental set-up: a room containing both a single end of rope and a doubled-over rope with two available ends. The 3-year-olds and the chimps were all taught that by pulling both ends of the doubled-over rope at the same time, they could draw a food-laden board toward them, delivering a batch of gummy frogs or bananas.

   15个黑猩猩与24个儿童面对相同的实验环境设定：一个有一端的绳子和两端的绳子的房间。实验人员告诉三岁儿童和黑猩猩：同时拉绳子的两端，就能把一个装载食物木板拉向他们，上面装着一批黏乎乎的青蛙或是香蕉。

Pulling the single rope would produce the identical food reward, but only with the help of another child or chimp in the room next door, who had to pull the opposite end of the rope at the same time. (The child or chimp acting as the potential partner in the experiment wasn't being tested; he or she had only the single end to pull. The potential partners were, however, highly motivated to pull that rope, because they too knew that a food reward would be coming their way.)

只有在另一个孩子或者猩猩的帮助下，同时朝着绳子反方向的一端拉，才能得到相同的食物。（这个实验里扮演孩子和黑猩猩潜在伙伴不被测试，他们只有一端可拉。然而这些潜在的拍档，具有很强的动机去拉扯那些绳子，因为他们知道奖励的食物很可能由此而来。）

Cooperating kids

默契的配合的孩子们

Despite the fact that the chimps got their food four to five seconds faster when they pulled the single end and worked with a partner than when they pulled both ends of the doubled rope by themselves, they were just as likely to choose the doubled rope, the researchers said. The chimps chose the single-ended rope 58 percent of the time, a number not significantly different than chance.

拉绳子固定的一端与拍档合作与单独拉绳子的两端相比，猩猩得到食物的时间要快4、5秒。尽管如此，研究人员指出：他们会更偏爱后者。有58%黑猩猩选择前者，很可能是一个偶然的数字。

The 3-year-old children, by contrast, chose to pull the collaborative single rope in 78 percent of trials, even though it did not produce snacks any faster.

与此相反，即使不能更快的得到点心，有78%孩子选择拽富有合作意味的那端。

The children had all practiced the game beforehand and so knew how it worked. They, like the chimps, could see their potential partner through an opening between the two rooms. But to make their experience more like that of the chimps, the kids were encouraged not to speak during the experiment.

孩子们经过预先训练，知晓游戏原理。跟黑猩猩一样，通过两个房子之间的窗口，他们能看见潜在的伙伴。为了让他们与黑猩猩的体验更近，孩子被鼓励保持安静。

In order to keep all factors constant, a snack went to the cooperating child (the one not being tested) regardless of whether he or she was called upon to pull. That set-up, however, led Rekers and her colleagues to worry that perhaps the tested children were picking the collaborative work to prevent their partners from getting gummy frogs for doing nothing.

为了保证所有客观条件不变，不管合作的孩子（没有被测试）有没有被要求去拉绳子，都会有一份点心。但设置好后，让雷卡斯和她的同事担心的是，被测试的孩子选择合作也许是为了避免自己的同伴不劳而获。

The researchers set up a second experiment with 12 new children in which the potential partner never received a reward — at least not within the sight of the tested child. The results were essentially unchanged, with 81 percent of kids choosing to work together. That finding suggested that the original result was not influenced by any desire to prevent freeloaders.

研究人员设置了对比实验：另外12个儿童的合作伙伴不得到奖励——至少没被测试者被发现。结果大体一致，有81%的孩子选择合作。这表明原有结果并没有因想阻止揩油的人受影响。

Rekers and her colleagues aren't sure whether this preference for cooperation is innate in humans or not, but one theory is that evolutionary pressures at some point nudged humans, but not chimps, into becoming cooperative foragers. The next step, Rekers said, is to study other primate species, such as bonobos.

雷卡斯和她的同事还不确定这种合作的表现是否人天生具有，但有种推测可以解释——进化的压力以某种方式推动人类，而不是猩猩，变为合作的捕猎者。下一步，雷卡斯将研究其他灵长类的物种，如巴诺布猿。

She said she also plans to look into what children get out of working together.

她说自己也计划研究怎样的孩子会逃避合作。

"Is it just that they enjoy doing stuff together?" she said. "Or are they following other strategies or goals?"

令雷卡斯不解的是：“他们究竟只是喜欢在一起做事，还是遵循自己的策略或者目标？”

The researchers reported their results Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

研究人员在周四的《当代生物学》上报告了他们的成果。