Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 10, Kahlaische Straße, 07745, Jena, Germany.
Anim Cogn. 2020 Sep;23(5):1019-1034. doi: 10.1007/s10071-020-01409-9. Epub 2020 Jul 5.
Dogs' production of referential communicative signals, i.e., showing, has gained increasing scientific interest over the last years. In this paper, we investigate whether shared information about the present and the past affects success and form of dog-human interactions. Second, in the context of showing, owners have always been treated as passive receivers of the dog's signals. Therefore, we examined whether the owner's behavior can influence the success and form of their dog's showing behavior. To address these questions, we employed a hidden-object task with knowledgeable dogs and naïve owners. Shared information about the present was varied via the spatial set-up, i.e., position of hiding places, within dog-owner pairs, with two conditions requiring either high or low precision in indicating the target location. Order of conditions varied between pairs, representing differences in shared knowledge about the past (communication history). Results do not support an effect of communication history on either success or showing effort. In contrast, the spatial set-up was found to affect success and choice of showing strategies. However, dogs did not adjust their showing effort according to different spatial set-ups. Our results suggest that the latter could be due to the owner's influence. Owner behavior generally increased the effort of their dog's showing behavior which was stronger in the set-up requiring low showing precision. Moreover, our results suggest that owners could influence their dog's showing accuracy (and thereby success) which, however, tended to be obstructive.
近年来，狗类产生指涉性交际信号（即展示）的能力引起了科学界越来越多的兴趣。在本文中，我们研究了当前和过去的共享信息是否会影响狗与人互动的成功和形式。其次，在展示的背景下，主人一直被视为狗信号的被动接收者。因此，我们研究了主人的行为是否会影响他们的狗展示行为的成功和形式。为了解决这些问题，我们使用了一项有知识的狗和天真的主人参与的隐藏物体任务。通过狗-主人对之间的空间设置（即隐藏地点的位置）来改变当前的共享信息，有两种情况需要指示目标位置的高或低精度。条件的顺序在对之间变化，代表过去（通信历史）的共享知识的差异。结果不支持通信历史对成功或展示努力的影响。相反，空间设置被发现会影响成功和展示策略的选择。然而，狗并没有根据不同的空间设置来调整它们的展示努力。我们的结果表明，后者可能是由于主人的影响。主人的行为通常会增加他们的狗的展示行为的努力，而在需要低展示精度的设置中则更强。此外，我们的结果表明，主人可以影响他们的狗的展示准确性（从而影响成功），但这种影响往往是阻碍性的。
