Trösch Miléna, Flamand Anna, Chasles Manon, Nowak Raymond, Calandreau Ludovic, Lansade Léa
UMR Physiologie de la Reproduction et des Comportement (PRC), Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (INRAE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut Français du Cheval et de l'Equitation (IFCE), Université de Tours, Nouzilly, France.
Front Psychol. 2020 Sep 29;11:562989. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.562989. eCollection 2020.
A key question in the field of animal cognition is how animals comprehend their physical world. Object permanence is one of the fundamental features of physical cognition. It is the ability to reason about hidden objects and to mentally reconstruct their invisible displacements. This cognitive skill has been studied in a wide range of species but never directly in the horse (). In this study, we therefore assessed the understanding of visible and invisible displacements in adult Welsh mares in two complementary experiments, using different horses. In experiment 1, visible displacement was investigated using two tasks adapted from the Uzgiris and Hunt scale 1. Invisible displacement was assessed using a transposition task, in which food was first hidden in one of two containers and the location of the containers was then switched. In experiment 2, we further investigated horses' understanding of visible and invisible displacements using an easier procedure designed to avoid potentially confounding factors. In both experiments, horses successfully completed the tasks involving visible displacement with two or three possible hiding places. However, in both experiments, horses failed the transposition tasks, suggesting that they may not be able to track the displacement of an object that is not directly perceived (i.e., invisible displacement). These results bring new insights into object permanence in horses and how they represent their physical world.
动物认知领域的一个关键问题是动物如何理解它们的物理世界。客体永久性是物理认知的基本特征之一。它是一种对隐藏物体进行推理并在脑海中重构其不可见位移的能力。这种认知技能已经在广泛的物种中进行了研究，但从未直接在马身上进行过研究。因此，在本研究中，我们使用不同的马匹，通过两个互补的实验评估了成年威尔士母马对可见和不可见位移的理解。在实验1中，我们使用了两项改编自乌兹吉里斯和亨特量表1的任务来研究可见位移。使用换位任务评估不可见位移，在该任务中，食物首先被藏在两个容器中的一个中，然后交换容器的位置。在实验2中，我们使用一个更简单的程序进一步研究了马对可见和不可见位移的理解，该程序旨在避免潜在的混杂因素。在两个实验中，马都成功完成了涉及有两三个可能藏身处的可见位移任务。然而，在两个实验中，马都未能完成换位任务，这表明它们可能无法追踪未直接感知到的物体的位移（即不可见位移）。这些结果为马的客体永久性以及它们如何表征物理世界带来了新的见解。
