Stöwe Mareike, Bugnyar Thomas, Loretto Matthias-Claudio, Schloegl Christian, Range Friederike, Kotrschal Kurt
Konrad Lorenz Research Station, A-4645 Grünau 11, Austria.
Behav Processes. 2006 Jul;73(1):68-75. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2006.03.015. Epub 2006 Mar 29.
Social context has been shown to encourage, or to delay object exploration and learning. This ambiguity might be due to factors such as social relationships and personality of the individuals involved. Here, we investigated in ravens (Corvus corax) individuals' consistency in response to novel objects over development and across contexts: alone versus social. In the social setting we focussed on the effects of social relationships on social facilitation during the approach to novel objects. We tested 11 hand-raised ravens with novel objects individually at three and six months of age and in dyadic combinations at six months of age. Individuals were consistent over development and contexts in their response to different novel objects. Birds joined siblings faster to approach novel objects than non-siblings. They also spent more time sitting close to siblings than to non-siblings. In male-male dyads but not in female-female dyads, subordinates approached the novel objects significantly faster than dominant birds. In contrast, dominant males were the first to approach the novel objects in mixed-sex combinations. Hence, the effect of social context seems to depend on the social relationships towards the companions and on the combination of the sexes.
社会环境已被证明会促进或延缓对物体的探索和学习。这种模糊性可能归因于诸如社会关系和相关个体的性格等因素。在此，我们研究了渡鸦（Corvus corax）个体在发育过程中以及在不同情境下（单独与社交情境）对新物体反应的一致性：在社交情境中，我们重点关注社会关系对接近新物体时社会促进作用的影响。我们对11只人工饲养的渡鸦进行了测试，在它们三个月和六个月大时分别单独用新物体进行测试，在六个月大时以二元组合形式进行测试。个体在发育过程和不同情境下对不同新物体的反应具有一致性。与非兄弟姐妹相比，鸟类与兄弟姐妹一起更快地接近新物体。它们与兄弟姐妹坐得很近的时间也比与非兄弟姐妹在一起的时间更长。在雄雄二元组合中，而非雌雌二元组合中，从属个体比占主导地位的鸟类显著更快地接近新物体。相比之下，在混合性别组合中，占主导地位的雄性是第一个接近新物体的。因此，社会环境的影响似乎取决于与同伴的社会关系以及性别的组合。
