Rørvang Maria Vilain, Nielsen Tina Bach, Christensen Janne Winther
Department Biosystems and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 23053 Alnarp, Sweden.
Department Animal Science, Aarhus University, 8830 Tjele, Denmark.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Jan 29;10(2):221. doi: 10.3390/ani10020221.
Animals can acquire new behavior through both individual and social learning. Several studies have investigated horses' ability to utilize inter-species (human demonstrator) social learning with conflicting results. In this study, we repeat a previous study, which found that horses had the ability to learn from observing humans performing an instrumental task, but we include a control for stimulus enhancement. One human demonstrator and thirty horses were included, and the horses were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: (A) full human demonstration, (B) partial human demonstration, and (C) no human demonstration. The task was for the horses to touch an object situated 1 m away from a feed box, to open this feed box, and thereby obtain a food reward. The success of each horse, the behavior directed towards the apparatus and the human, and behaviors indicative of frustration were observed. The results showed that horses observing a full and partial human demonstration were not more successful in solving the instrumental task than horses not observing any demonstration. Horses that did not solve the task expressed more box- and human-oriented behavior compared to successful horses, which may be an indication of motivation to solve the task and/or frustration from being unable to solve the task.
动物可以通过个体学习和社会学习获得新行为。几项研究调查了马利用种间（人类示范者）社会学习的能力，但结果相互矛盾。在本研究中，我们重复了之前的一项研究，该研究发现马有能力通过观察人类执行一项工具性任务来学习，但我们增加了一个对刺激增强的控制。研究纳入了一名人类示范者和30匹马，这些马被随机分配到三种处理方式之一：（A）完整的人类示范，（B）部分人类示范，以及（C）无人类示范。任务是让马触摸位于离饲料箱1米远的一个物体，打开这个饲料箱，从而获得食物奖励。观察了每匹马的成功情况、针对设备和人类的行为，以及表明沮丧情绪的行为。结果表明，观察了完整和部分人类示范的马在解决工具性任务方面并不比未观察任何示范的马更成功。与成功的马相比，未解决任务的马表现出更多针对箱子和人类的行为，这可能表明它们有解决任务的动机和/或因无法解决任务而感到沮丧。
