McAuliffe Katherine, Bogese Michael, Chang Linda W, Andrews Caitlin E, Mayer Tanya, Faranda Aja, Hamlin J Kiley, Santos Laurie R
Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, United States.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Psychol. 2019 Mar 29;10:591. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00591. eCollection 2019.
Social evaluative abilities emerge in human infancy, highlighting their importance in shaping our species' early understanding of the social world. Remarkably, infants show social evaluation in relatively abstract contexts: for instance, preferring a wooden shape that helps another shape in a puppet show over a shape that hinders another character (Hamlin et al., 2007). Here we ask whether these abstract social evaluative abilities are shared with other species. Domestic dogs provide an ideal animal species in which to address this question because this species cooperates extensively with conspecifics and humans and may thus benefit from a more general ability to socially evaluate prospective partners. We tested dogs on a social evaluation puppet show task originally used with human infants. Subjects watched a helpful shape aid an agent in achieving its goal and a hinderer shape prevent an agent from achieving its goal. We examined (1) whether dogs showed a preference for the helpful or hinderer shape, (2) whether dogs exhibited longer exploration of the helpful or hinderer shape, and (3) whether dogs were more likely to engage with their handlers during the helper or hinderer events. In contrast to human infants, dogs showed no preference for either the helper or the hinderer, nor were they more likely to engage with their handlers during helper or hinderer events. Dogs did spend more time exploring the hindering shape, perhaps indicating that they were puzzled by the agent's unhelpful behavior. However, this preference was moderated by a preference for one of the two shapes, regardless of role. These findings suggest that, relative to infants, dogs show weak or absent social evaluative abilities when presented with abstract events and point to constraints on dogs' abilities to evaluate others' behavior.
社会评价能力在人类婴儿期就已出现，凸显了其在塑造我们这个物种对社会世界的早期理解中的重要性。值得注意的是，婴儿在相对抽象的情境中展现出社会评价：例如，在木偶戏中，比起阻碍另一个角色的形状，婴儿更喜欢帮助另一个形状的木制形状（哈姆林等人，2007年）。在此，我们探究这些抽象的社会评价能力是否为其他物种所共有。家犬是解决这个问题的理想动物物种，因为这个物种与同种个体和人类广泛合作，因此可能受益于更普遍的社会评价潜在伙伴的能力。我们用最初用于人类婴儿的社会评价木偶戏任务来测试狗。实验对象观看一个帮助形状协助一个主体实现其目标，以及一个阻碍形状阻止一个主体实现其目标。我们考察了：（1）狗是否对帮助形状或阻碍形状表现出偏好；（2）狗是否对帮助形状或阻碍形状表现出更长时间的探索；（3）在帮助或阻碍事件发生期间，狗是否更有可能与它们的主人互动。与人类婴儿不同，狗对帮助形状或阻碍形状都没有表现出偏好，在帮助或阻碍事件发生期间，它们也没有更有可能与主人互动。狗确实花了更多时间探索阻碍形状，这可能表明它们对主体的无益行为感到困惑。然而，这种偏好受到对两种形状之一的偏好的调节，而不论其角色如何。这些发现表明，相对于婴儿，当面对抽象事件时，狗表现出微弱或缺乏社会评价能力，并指出了狗评价他人行为能力的局限性。
