Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Doctoral School of Biology, Institute of Biology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Anim Cogn. 2022 Dec;25(6):1645-1652. doi: 10.1007/s10071-022-01657-x. Epub 2022 Aug 5.
While personality and cognition are distinct domains, some personality traits may affect the capacity for problem-solving. It was suggested that there is a positive association between the Playfulness trait and problem-solving performance in humans. Studies on giftedness (extremely good capacity in the case of a specific skill), typically aimed to reveal the genetic, experiential, and mental origins of such extreme inter-individual variation. We exploited recent findings on giftedness in a specific cognitive skill, object label learning, in dogs to explore the potential association between this exceptional skill and personality traits. We administered the Dog Personality Questionnaire to 21 gifted dog owners and compared the personality traits of their dogs to those of matched samples of 43 Hungarian and 101 Austrian typical dogs, i.e., dogs lacking this exceptional capacity. Since most Gifted Word Learner dogs are Border collies, we restricted our analysis to dogs of this breed. We hypothesized that the Gifted Word Learner dogs may show higher levels of Playfulness. As expected, we found that the gifted Border collies were rated as more playful than both the Hungarian and Austrian typical ones. Our results suggest that an extremely high level of Playfulness is associated with giftedness in a specific cognitive trait in dogs: the capacity to learn object verbal labels, thus opening new possibilities for comparative research on the relationship between giftedness and personality.
虽然个性和认知是不同的领域，但某些个性特征可能会影响解决问题的能力。有人提出，在人类中，玩乐特质与解决问题的表现呈正相关。关于天赋（在特定技能方面非常出色的能力）的研究通常旨在揭示这种极端个体差异的遗传、经验和心理起源。我们利用最近在狗的特定认知技能——物体标签学习方面的天赋研究结果，探索这种特殊技能与个性特征之间的潜在联系。我们向 21 名有天赋的狗主人发放了狗的个性问卷，并将他们的狗的个性特征与 43 只匈牙利犬和 101 只奥地利犬（即缺乏这种特殊能力的犬）的匹配样本进行了比较。由于大多数天赋词汇学习者狗都是边境牧羊犬，因此我们将分析仅限于这种犬种。我们假设天赋词汇学习者狗可能表现出更高的玩乐特质。正如预期的那样，我们发现，与匈牙利犬和奥地利犬相比，有天赋的边境牧羊犬被评为更具玩乐特质。我们的研究结果表明，极高的玩乐特质与狗在特定认知特质上的天赋有关：学习物体口头标签的能力，从而为比较研究天赋与个性之间的关系开辟了新的可能性。
