Miletto Petrazzini Maria Elena, Wynne Clive D L
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
Behav Processes. 2016 Jan;122:90-7. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2015.11.013. Epub 2015 Nov 19.
Numerous studies have reported that animals reliably discriminate quantities of more or less food. However, little attention has been given to the relative salience of numerosity compared to the total amount of food when animals are making their choices. Here we investigated this issue in dogs. Dogs were given choices between two quantities of food items in three different conditions. In the Congruent condition, the total amount of food co-varied with the number of food items; in the Incongruent condition the total amount was pitted against the numerosity; and in the Controlled condition the total amount between the sets was equal. Results show that dogs based their choice on the total amount of edible food rather than on the number of food items, suggesting that, in food choice tasks, amount counts more than number. The presence of the largest individual item in a set did not bias dogs' choices. A control test excluded the possibility that dogs based their choices on olfactory cues alone.
许多研究报告称，动物能够可靠地区分或多或少食物的数量。然而，当动物做出选择时，与食物总量相比，数量的相对显著性很少受到关注。在这里，我们在狗身上研究了这个问题。在三种不同条件下，让狗在两种数量的食物之间进行选择。在一致条件下，食物总量与食物项目数量共同变化；在不一致条件下，食物总量与数量形成对比；在对照条件下，两组之间的食物总量相等。结果表明，狗的选择基于可食用食物的总量而非食物项目的数量，这表明在食物选择任务中，总量比数量更重要。一组中最大的单个食物项目的存在并未影响狗的选择。一项对照测试排除了狗仅基于嗅觉线索做出选择的可能性。
