Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biomediche, Sezione di Psicologia, Facoltà di Medicina, Università di Milano, Via F. Cervi 93, 20090, Segrate, MI, Italy.
Anim Cogn. 2012 Mar;15(2):175-85. doi: 10.1007/s10071-011-0443-0. Epub 2011 Aug 28.
Social referencing is the seeking of information from another individual to form one's own understanding and guide action. In this study, adult dogs were tested in a social referencing paradigm involving their owner and a potentially scary object. Dogs received either a positive or negative message from the owner. The aim was to evaluate the presence of referential looking to the owner, behavioural regulation based on the owner's (vocal and facial) emotional message and observational conditioning following the owner's actions towards the object. Most dogs (83%) looked referentially to the owner after looking at the strange object, thus they appear to seek information about the environment from the human, but little differences were found between dogs in the positive and negative groups as regards behavioural regulation: possible explanations for this are discussed. Finally, a strong effect of observational conditioning was found with dogs in the positive group moving closer to the fan and dogs in the negative group moving away, both mirroring their owner's behaviour. Results are discussed in relation to studies on human-dog communication, attachment and social learning.
社会参照是指个体从他人那里获取信息，以形成自己的理解并指导行动。在这项研究中，成年狗在涉及主人和潜在可怕物体的社会参照范式中接受测试。狗从主人那里收到了积极或消极的信息。目的是评估是否存在对主人的参照性注视、基于主人（声音和面部）情绪信息的行为调节以及对主人对物体的行为的观察性条件反射。大多数狗（83%）在观察陌生物体后会向主人寻求信息，因此它们似乎会向人类寻求有关环境的信息，但在积极和消极组的狗之间，在行为调节方面几乎没有发现差异：对此可能的解释进行了讨论。最后，在积极组的狗中发现了强烈的观察性条件反射，它们更靠近风扇，而在消极组的狗则远离风扇，这都反映了它们主人的行为。结果与关于人类-狗交流、依恋和社会学习的研究进行了讨论。
