Takaoka Akiko, Maeda Tomomi, Hori Yusuke, Fujita Kazuo
Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Sakyo, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan,
Anim Cogn. 2015 Mar;18(2):475-83. doi: 10.1007/s10071-014-0816-2. Epub 2014 Oct 28.
Dogs are known to consistently follow human pointing gestures. In this study, we asked whether dogs "automatically" do this or whether they flexibly adjust their behavior depending upon the reliability of the pointer, demonstrated in an immediately preceding event. We tested pet dogs in a version of the object choice task in which a piece of food was hidden in one of the two containers. In Experiment 1, Phase 1, an experimenter pointed at the baited container; the second container was empty. In Phase 2, after showing the contents of both containers to the dogs, the experimenter pointed at the empty container. In Phase 3, the procedure was exactly as in Phase 1. We compared the dogs' responses to the experimenter's pointing gestures in Phases 1 and 3. Most dogs followed pointing in Phase 1, but many fewer did so in Phase 3. In Experiment 2, dogs followed a new experimenter's pointing in Phase 3 following replication of procedures of Phases 1 and 2 in Experiment 1. This ruled out the possibility that dogs simply lost motivation to participate in the task in later phases. These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference.
众所周知，狗能始终如一地遵循人类的指示手势。在本研究中，我们探讨狗是“自动”这样做，还是会根据指示者的可靠性灵活调整其行为，这一点在紧接的前一个事件中得到了体现。我们在一种物体选择任务中对宠物狗进行了测试，在该任务中，一块食物被藏在两个容器中的一个里。在实验1的第1阶段，一名实验者指向装有诱饵的容器；第二个容器是空的。在第2阶段，在向狗展示了两个容器的内容物之后，实验者指向空容器。在第3阶段，程序与第1阶段完全相同。我们比较了狗在第1阶段和第3阶段对实验者指示手势的反应。大多数狗在第1阶段遵循指示，但在第3阶段这样做的狗少得多。在实验2中，在重复实验1的第1阶段和第2阶段的程序后，狗在第3阶段遵循了新实验者的指示。这排除了狗在后期阶段只是失去参与任务动力的可能性。这些结果表明，狗不仅非常擅长理解人类的指示手势，而且它们还会对给出线索的人的可靠性进行推断，并因此根据推断灵活地改变自己的行为。
