Grandgeorge Marine, Gautier Yentl, Bourreau Yannig, Mossu Heloise, Hausberger Martine
Univ Rennes, Normandie Univ, CNRS, EthoS (Éthologie animale et humaine) - UMR 6552, Rennes, France.
Front Psychol. 2020 Sep 4;11:2047. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02047. eCollection 2020.
Visual social attention is an important part of the social life of many species, including humans, but its patterning may vary between species. Studies on human-pet relationships have revealed that visual attention is also part of such interspecific interactions and that pets are sensitive to the human visual attentional state. It has been argued that domestication and/or repeated experiences with humans have shaped and refined these decoding abilities. Little is known on how the species' evolutionary history may play a role in determining visual attention patterns during interactions, nor how the human's own social skills may influence the animal's attention patterns in human-animal interactions. In the present study, we investigated the visual attention patterns directed to the partner in dog-child and cat-child interactions in their home environment. We also compared these patterns between a group of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and children with typical development. We found that the attention patterns differed according to species, with dogs displaying more gazes and cats more glances toward their human interlocutor, while children showed gazes toward both species. Only slight differences were observed according to the developmental status of children: ASD children displayed much more visual attention with their pet cat than with their pet dog and the same amount of visual attention toward their pet, whatever the species, as typically developing (TD) children. Because humans rely a lot upon visual communication in their own social encounters, where direct gazes play a major role from early on, they may be especially sensitive to the gazing behavior of their dogs. People with ASD, with a less typical pattern of interaction, may be more comfortable with the less "invasive" short glances of cats. These results suggest not only that interspecific communication has to be associated with processing and storing the other species' ways of communicating in order to be successful but also that visual attention patterns during interactions, even when interspecific, are, for a large part, the result of the species' own evolutionary history.
视觉社会注意力是包括人类在内的许多物种社会生活的重要组成部分，但其模式可能因物种而异。对人类与宠物关系的研究表明，视觉注意力也是这种种间互动的一部分，并且宠物对人类的视觉注意力状态很敏感。有人认为，驯化和/或与人类的反复经历塑造并完善了这些解码能力。对于物种的进化历史如何在互动过程中决定视觉注意力模式，以及人类自身的社交技能如何在人-动物互动中影响动物的注意力模式，我们知之甚少。在本研究中，我们调查了在家庭环境中狗-儿童和猫-儿童互动时指向伙伴的视觉注意力模式。我们还比较了一组患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的儿童和发育正常儿童之间的这些模式。我们发现，注意力模式因物种而异，狗对人类对话者的注视更多，而猫则更多地是瞥一眼，而儿童对两种物种都有注视。根据儿童的发育状况仅观察到细微差异：ASD儿童对宠物猫的视觉注意力比对宠物狗的要多得多，并且无论宠物是哪种物种，他们对宠物的视觉注意力与发育正常（TD）儿童相同。由于人类在自己的社交交往中很大程度上依赖视觉交流，其中直接注视从一开始就起着主要作用，所以他们可能对狗的注视行为特别敏感。患有ASD的人互动模式不太典型，可能对猫较少“侵入性”的短暂瞥视更适应。这些结果不仅表明种间交流必须与处理和存储其他物种的交流方式相关联才能成功，而且还表明互动过程中的视觉注意力模式，即使是种间的，在很大程度上也是该物种自身进化历史的结果。
