Department of Ethology, Institute of Biology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, 1117, Budapest, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 18;11(1):2761. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82309-x.
Mental representations of one's own body provide useful reference when negotiating physical environmental challenges. Body-awareness is a neuro-ontogenetic precursor for higher order self-representation, but there is a lack of an ecologically valid experimental approach to it among nonhuman species. We tested dogs (N = 32) in the 'body as an obstacle' task. They had to pick up and give an object to their owner, whilst standing on a small mat. In the test condition we attached the object to the mat, thus the dogs had to leave the mat because otherwise they could not lift the object. Dogs came off the mat more frequently and sooner in the test condition, than in the main control condition, where the object was attached to the ground. This is the first convincing evidence of body awareness through the understanding of the consequence of own actions in a species where previously no higher-order self-representation capacity was found. We urge for an ecologically valid approach, and following of bottom-up methods, in studying modularly constructed self-representation.
当人们面对物理环境挑战时，自身身体的心理表象提供了有用的参考。身体意识是高阶自我表象的神经发生学前提，但在非人类物种中，缺乏对其进行生态有效实验研究的方法。我们在“身体作为障碍”任务中对狗（N=32）进行了测试。当它们站在一个小垫子上时，它们必须捡起并将物品交给主人。在测试条件下，我们将物品固定在垫子上，因此狗必须离开垫子，否则它们无法拿起物品。与主要控制条件相比，在测试条件下，狗离开垫子的频率更高，时间更早，而在主要控制条件下，物品是固定在地面上的。这是首次在一个先前没有发现高阶自我表现能力的物种中，通过对自身行为后果的理解，证明了身体意识的存在。我们敦促在研究模块化自我表现时采用生态有效方法和自下而上的方法。
