Abdai Judit, Ferdinandy Bence, Terencio Cristina Baño, Pogány Ákos, Miklósi Ádám
Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter prom 1/c, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary
Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter prom 1/a, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary.
Biol Lett. 2017 Jun;13(6). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0156.
Humans have a tendency to perceive inanimate objects as animate based on simple motion cues. Although animacy is considered as a complex cognitive property, this recognition seems to be spontaneous. Researchers have found that young human infants discriminate between dependent and independent movement patterns. However, quick visual perception of animate entities may be crucial to non-human species as well. Based on general mammalian homology, dogs may possess similar skills to humans. Here, we investigated whether dogs and humans discriminate similarly between dependent and independent motion patterns performed by geometric shapes. We projected a side-by-side video display of the two patterns and measured looking times towards each side, in two trials. We found that in Trial 1, both dogs and humans were equally interested in the two patterns, but in Trial 2 of both species, looking times towards the dependent pattern decreased, whereas they increased towards the independent pattern. We argue that dogs and humans spontaneously recognized the specific pattern and habituated to it rapidly, but continued to show interest in the 'puzzling' pattern. This suggests that both species tend to recognize inanimate agents as animate relying solely on their motions.
人类倾向于基于简单的运动线索将无生命物体视为有生命的。尽管有生命性被认为是一种复杂的认知属性，但这种识别似乎是自发的。研究人员发现，人类幼儿能够区分依赖型和独立型运动模式。然而，对有生命实体的快速视觉感知对非人类物种可能也至关重要。基于一般的哺乳动物同源性，狗可能拥有与人类相似的技能。在此，我们研究了狗和人类在由几何形状执行的依赖型和独立型运动模式之间的区分是否相似。我们在两次试验中播放了这两种模式并列的视频展示，并测量了对每一侧的注视时间。我们发现，在试验1中，狗和人类对这两种模式同样感兴趣，但在两个物种的试验2中，对依赖型模式的注视时间减少，而对独立型模式的注视时间增加。我们认为，狗和人类自发地识别出了特定模式并迅速对其产生习惯，但对“令人困惑”的模式仍表现出兴趣。这表明这两个物种都倾向于仅依靠运动将无生命物体视为有生命的。
