Völter Christoph J, Huber Ludwig
Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna, Veterinaerplatz 1, 1210 Vienna, Austria.
iScience. 2022 Jul 20;25(9):104801. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104801. eCollection 2022 Sep 16.
Certain motion cues like self-propulsion and speed changes allow human and nonhuman animals to quickly detect animate beings. In the current eye-tracking study, we examined whether dogs' () pupil size was influenced by such motion cues. In Experiment 1, dogs watched different videos with normal or reversed playback direction showing a human agent releasing an object. The reversed playback gave the impression that the objects were self-propelled. In Experiment 2, dogs watched videos of a rolling ball that either moved at constant or variable speed. We found that the dogs' pupil size only changed significantly over the course of the videos in the conditions with self-propelled (upward) movements (Experiment 1) or variable speed (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that dogs orient toward self-propelled stimuli that move at variable speed, which might contribute to their detection of animate beings.
某些运动线索，如自我推进和速度变化，使人类和非人类动物能够快速检测到有生命的物体。在当前的眼动追踪研究中，我们研究了狗的（）瞳孔大小是否受此类运动线索的影响。在实验1中，狗观看了不同的视频，这些视频的播放方向正常或相反，展示了一个人类主体释放一个物体。反向播放给人一种物体是自我推进的印象。在实验2中，狗观看了一个滚动球的视频，球的速度要么恒定，要么变化。我们发现，只有在出现自我推进（向上）运动的条件下（实验1）或速度变化的条件下（实验2），狗的瞳孔大小才会在视频过程中发生显著变化。我们的研究结果表明，狗会朝向以可变速度自我推进的刺激物，这可能有助于它们检测有生命的物体。
