Zeng Ying, Baciadonna Luigi, Davies James R, Pilenga Cristina, Favaro Livio, Garcia-Pelegrin Elias
Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Institut de Biologie Paris-Seine, Sorbonne University, INSERM, CNRS, Paris, France.
Heliyon. 2024 Jun 17;10(12):e33192. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33192. eCollection 2024 Jun 30.
Gaze cues play a vital role in conveying critical information about objects and locations necessary for survival, such as food sources, predators, and the attentional states of conspecific and heterospecific individuals. During referential intentional communication, the continuous alternation of gaze between a communicative partner and a specific object or point of interest attracts the partner's attention towards the target. This behaviour is considered by many as essential for understanding intentions and is thought to involve mental planning. Here, we investigated the behavioural responses of seven bottlenose dolphins () that were given an impossible task in the presence of two experimenters (a 'commanding experimenter' and a 'non-commanding experimenter'), whose attentional state towards the dolphins varied. We found that the dolphins spontaneously displayed gaze alternation, specifically triadic referential pointing, only when the human commanding experimenter was facing them. However, they ceased to alternate their gaze between the impossible object and the commanding experimenter when the experimenter had their back turned. Notably, the dolphins' behaviour differed from general pointing and gaze, as their triadic sequence occurred within a narrow time window. These findings suggest that the dolphins were sensitive to human attentional cues and utilized their own gaze cue (pointing) as a salient signal to attract the attention of the commanding experimenter towards a specific location.
注视线索在传达有关生存所需物体和位置的关键信息方面起着至关重要的作用，例如食物来源、捕食者以及同种和异种个体的注意力状态。在指示性意图交流过程中，交流伙伴与特定物体或兴趣点之间注视的持续交替会吸引伙伴对目标的注意力。许多人认为这种行为对于理解意图至关重要，并且被认为涉及心理规划。在此，我们研究了七只宽吻海豚在两名实验者（一名“指挥实验者”和一名“非指挥实验者”）面前被给予一项不可能完成的任务时的行为反应，这两名实验者对海豚的注意力状态各不相同。我们发现，只有当人类指挥实验者面对海豚时，海豚才会自发地表现出注视交替，特别是三元指示性指向。然而，当实验者背对着它们时，海豚就不再在不可能完成任务的物体和指挥实验者之间交替注视。值得注意的是，海豚的行为不同于一般的指向和注视，因为它们的三元序列发生在一个狭窄的时间窗口内。这些发现表明，海豚对人类的注意力线索很敏感，并利用自己的注视线索（指向）作为一个显著信号，吸引指挥实验者对特定位置的注意。
