Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University of Vienna, University of Vienna, 1210 Vienna, Austria.
Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 8;7:42459. doi: 10.1038/srep42459.
Inhibiting an immediate behaviour in favour of an alternative but more advantageous behaviour has been linked to individual success in life, especially in humans. Dogs, which have been living in the human environment for thousands of years, are exposed to daily situations that require inhibition different in context from other non-domesticated species. One task regularly used to study inhibitory control is the delay of gratification task, which requires individuals to choose between an immediate option of lower value and a delayed option of higher value. We tested sixteen dogs in a non-social delay of gratification task, conducting two different conditions: a quality and a quantity condition. While the majority of dogs failed to wait for more than 10 s, some dogs tolerated delays of up to 140 s, while one dog waited for 15 minutes. Moreover, dogs had more difficulties to wait if the reward increased in terms of quantity than quality. Interestingly, dogs were able to anticipate the delay duration and some dogs developed behavioural patterns that predicted waiting, which seems similar in some respects to 'coping-strategies' found in children, chimpanzees and parrots. Our results indicate that strategies to cope with impulsivity seem to be consistent and present across animal taxa.
抑制即时行为转而选择更有利但需要延迟满足的行为，这与个体在生活中的成功有关，尤其是在人类中。狗在人类环境中生活了数千年，它们每天都会遇到需要抑制行为的情况，这些情况在背景上与其他非驯化物种的抑制行为不同。延迟满足任务是一种常用于研究抑制控制的任务，它要求个体在即时选择低价值的选项和延迟选择高价值的选项之间做出选择。我们在非社交延迟满足任务中测试了 16 只狗，进行了两种不同的条件：质量条件和数量条件。虽然大多数狗无法等待超过 10 秒，但有些狗可以忍受长达 140 秒的延迟，而有一只狗则等待了 15 分钟。此外，如果奖励在数量上而不是质量上增加，狗就更难等待。有趣的是，狗能够预测延迟时间，并且有些狗发展出了预测等待的行为模式，这在某些方面类似于在儿童、黑猩猩和鹦鹉中发现的“应对策略”。我们的研究结果表明，应对冲动的策略似乎在动物分类中是一致且存在的。
