Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Hattyú 14, 1051 Budapest, Hungary.
Curr Biol. 2012 Feb 7;22(3):209-12. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.12.018. Epub 2012 Jan 5.
Recent evidence suggests that preverbal infants' gaze following can be triggered only if an actor's head turn is preceded by the expression of communicative intent [1]. Such connectedness between ostensive and referential signals may be uniquely human, enabling infants to effectively respond to referential communication directed to them. In the light of increasing evidence of dogs' social communicative skills [2], an intriguing question is whether dogs' responsiveness to human directional gestures [3] is associated with the situational context in an infant-like manner. Borrowing a method used in infant studies [1], dogs watched video presentations of a human actor turning toward one of two objects, and their eye-gaze patterns were recorded with an eye tracker. Results show a higher tendency of gaze following in dogs when the human's head turning was preceded by the expression of communicative intent (direct gaze, addressing). This is the first evidence to show that (1) eye-tracking techniques can be used for studying dogs' social skills and (2) the exploitation of human gaze cues depends on the communicatively relevant pattern of ostensive and referential signals in dogs. Our findings give further support to the existence of a functionally infant-analog social competence in this species.
最近的证据表明，前言语婴儿的目光跟随只能在演员的头部转动之前伴随着交流意图的表达[1]时被触发。这种陈述性和指示性信号之间的联系可能是人类独有的，使婴儿能够有效地对指向他们的指示性交流做出反应。鉴于越来越多的证据表明狗具有社交沟通技巧[2]，一个有趣的问题是，狗对人类指向手势[3]的反应是否以婴儿般的方式与情境背景相关。借鉴婴儿研究中使用的一种方法[1]，狗观看了人类演员转向两个物体之一的视频演示，并用眼动追踪器记录了它们的注视模式。结果表明，当人类头部转动之前伴随着交流意图的表达（直接注视，称呼）时，狗更倾向于跟随目光。这是第一个证明（1）眼动跟踪技术可用于研究狗的社交技能，（2）对人类注视线索的利用取决于狗的陈述性和指示性信号的交际相关模式的证据。我们的发现进一步支持了这种物种具有功能上类似于婴儿的社交能力。
