Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Messerli Research Institute, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 16;10(1):19832. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-72506-5.
The prediction of upcoming events is of importance not only to humans and non-human primates but also to other animals that live in complex environments with lurking threats or moving prey. In this study, we examined motion tracking and anticipatory looking in dogs in two eye-tracking experiments. In Experiment 1, we presented pet dogs (N = 14) with a video depicting how two players threw a Frisbee back and forth multiple times. The horizontal movement of the Frisbee explained a substantial amount of variance of the dogs' horizontal eye movements. With increasing duration of the video, the dogs looked at the catcher before the Frisbee arrived. In Experiment 2, we showed the dogs (N = 12) the same video recording. This time, however, we froze and rewound parts of the video to examine how the dogs would react to surprising events (i.e., the Frisbee hovering in midair and reversing its direction). The Frisbee again captured the dogs' attention, particularly when the video was frozen and rewound for the first time. Additionally, the dogs looked faster at the catcher when the video moved forward compared to when it was rewound. We conclude that motion tracking and anticipatory looking paradigms provide promising tools for future cognitive research with canids.
预测即将发生的事件不仅对人类和非人类灵长类动物很重要，对生活在潜伏威胁或移动猎物的复杂环境中的其他动物也很重要。在这项研究中，我们通过两项眼动追踪实验，研究了犬类的运动跟踪和预测性注视。在实验 1 中，我们向宠物犬（N=14）展示了一段视频，视频中两名玩家多次来回投掷飞盘。飞盘的水平运动解释了犬类水平眼球运动的大部分差异。随着视频时长的增加，犬类在飞盘到达之前会看向接球手。在实验 2 中，我们向犬类（N=12）展示了相同的视频。然而，这一次，我们冻结并倒回了视频的部分内容，以观察犬类对意外事件（即飞盘在空中悬停并改变方向）的反应。飞盘再次吸引了犬类的注意力，尤其是当视频第一次被冻结和倒回时。此外，与视频倒回时相比，当视频向前移动时，犬类会更快地看向接球手。我们的结论是，运动跟踪和预测性注视范式为未来犬类认知研究提供了有前途的工具。
