Chimpanzee Yawning Essay

Chimpanzee Yawning Assignment Answers
The author decided to do this experiment, with intentions to find out whether human like animals (chimpanzees) identifies with animations as far as (movies, cartoons, etc.) having emotional connections and empathizing with them, us humans do (Matthew W. Campbell, 2009). If so, they would have a useful tool in animal studies. From reading the research, I have found that the chimps were aware of the animated chimpanzees at some point in this experiment. They discriminated against some of the facial expressions that were made from the animations. Also, yawning is controlled by the same mechanisms that makes emotions contagious (Matthew W. Campbell, 2009). The authors hypothesized that if the chimps identified with the computer animations, then the chimps would respond by yawning in reactions to the computerized chimps.
The chimps were separated and put into different testing rooms, of different sizes. The experimenters used 3D animated chimpanzee’s facial expressions movements, and given two types of movements, a yawn and a controlled expression. The videos did not have sound. Each clip was 10 seconds long and was played 10 times, after the clips were assembled they lasted 15 minutes. The videos were replayed in pseudo-order, and presented on a 48cm LCD screen catered to the chimps who were sitting down (Matthew W. Campbell, 2009). In this particular experiment, the independent variable would be both groups of human chimps, and the computerized chimps. The dependent variables would be how often the chimps respond to the computerized chimps yawning (do the chimps process and engage in animated images as humans do). The experimenters grouping these chimpanzees by their compatibility, controlled for any confounding