Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Dev Sci. 2012 Mar;15(2):222-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01120.x. Epub 2011 Nov 24.
Domestic dogs comprehend human gestural communication in a way that other animal species do not. But little is known about the specific cues they use to determine when human communication is intended for them. In a series of four studies, we confronted both adult dogs and young dog puppies with object choice tasks in which a human indicated one of two opaque cups by either pointing to it or gazing at it. We varied whether the communicator made eye contact with the dog in association with the gesture (or whether her back was turned or her eyes were directed at another recipient) and whether the communicator called the dog's name (or the name of another recipient). Results demonstrated the importance of eye contact in human-dog communication, and, to a lesser extent, the calling of the dog's name--with no difference between adult dogs and young puppies--which are precisely the communicative cues used by human infants for identifying communicative intent. Unlike human children, however, dogs did not seem to comprehend the human's communicative gesture when it was directed to another human, perhaps because dogs view all human communicative acts as directives for the recipient.
家犬能够理解人类的手势信息，而其他动物则不能。但关于家犬用来确定人类交流是否针对它们的特定线索，人们知之甚少。在一系列四项研究中，我们让成年犬和幼犬小狗面对物体选择任务，人类通过指向或凝视两个不透明杯子中的一个来指示。我们改变了交流者在手势时是否与狗进行眼神接触（或者她是否背对着狗，或者她的眼睛是否看向另一个接收者）以及交流者是否叫狗的名字（或另一个接收者的名字）。结果表明，眼神接触在人类与犬类的交流中很重要，在较小程度上，叫狗的名字也很重要——成年犬和幼犬小狗之间没有区别——这些正是人类婴儿用来识别交流意图的交流线索。然而，与人类儿童不同的是，当人类的交流手势指向另一个人时，狗似乎并不理解人类的交流手势，这也许是因为狗将所有人类的交流行为视为对接收者的指令。
