Ostojić Ljerka, Clayton Nicola S
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK,
Anim Cogn. 2014 Mar;17(2):445-59. doi: 10.1007/s10071-013-0676-1. Epub 2013 Sep 1.
The process of domestication has arguably provided dogs (Canis familiaris) with decreased emotional reactivity (reduced fear and aggression) and increased socio-cognitive skills adaptive for living with humans. It has been suggested that dogs are uniquely equipped with abilities that have been identified as crucial in cooperative problem-solving, namely social tolerance and the ability to attend to other individuals' behaviour. Accordingly, dogs might be hypothesised to perform well in tasks in which they have to work together with a human partner. Recently, researchers have found that dogs successfully solved a simple cooperative task with another dog. Due to the simplicity of the task, this study was, however, unable to provide clear evidence as to whether the dogs' successful performance was based on the cognitive ability of behavioural coordination, namely the capacity to link task requirements to the necessity of adjusting one's actions to the partner's behaviour. Here, we tested dogs with the most commonly used cooperative task, appropriate to test behavioural coordination. In addition, we paired dogs with both a conspecific and a human partner. Although dogs had difficulties in inhibiting the necessary action when required to wait for their partner, they successfully attended to the two cues that predicted a successful outcome, namely their partner's behaviour and the incremental movement of rewards towards themselves. This behavioural coordination was shown with both a conspecific and a human partner, in line with the recent findings suggesting that dogs exhibit highly developed socio-cognitive skills in interactions with both humans and other dogs.
驯化过程可以说使狗（家犬）的情绪反应性降低（恐惧和攻击性减弱），并提高了其社会认知技能，从而更适应与人类生活。有人认为，狗具备一些独特的能力，这些能力在合作解决问题中被认为至关重要，即社会容忍度和关注其他个体行为的能力。因此，可以假设狗在必须与人类伙伴合作的任务中表现良好。最近，研究人员发现狗能与另一只狗成功完成一项简单的合作任务。然而，由于任务简单，这项研究无法明确证明狗的成功表现是否基于行为协调的认知能力，即能否将任务要求与根据伙伴行为调整自身行动的必要性联系起来。在此，我们用最常用的合作任务对狗进行测试，该任务适合测试行为协调能力。此外，我们将狗与同种伙伴和人类伙伴配对。尽管狗在需要等待伙伴时难以抑制必要行动，但它们成功关注到了两个预示成功结果的线索，即伙伴的行为以及奖励向自己方向的递增移动。这种行为协调在与同种伙伴和人类伙伴的合作中都有体现，这与最近的研究结果一致，即狗在与人类和其他狗的互动中展现出高度发达的社会认知技能。
