Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, Budapest, 1117, Hungary.
BMC Biol. 2024 Aug 26;22(1):183. doi: 10.1186/s12915-024-01983-1.
The ability to learn from humans via observation was considered to be equally present across properly socialized dogs. We showed recently that cooperative working breeds learned from a human demonstrator more effectively. We hypothesized that functional breed selection could affect sensitivity to human attention-eliciting behavior. Accordingly, we ran the first ever study on dogs that compared the effect of ostensive and neutral verbal communication in a social learning scenario. We used the detour paradigm around a transparent V-shaped fence with either ostensive (addressing the receiver both with words and specific, attention-eliciting prosody) or neutral speech (monotonous reciting of a short poem) demonstration. The other features (gestures, movement) of the demonstration sequence were kept identical between the two conditions. We tested (N = 70) companion dogs from 17 cooperative and 16 independent breeds in three 1-min trials. Subjects had to obtain the reward by detouring around the fence.
Detour latencies of the cooperative dogs improved after both ostensive and neutral speech demonstrations. The independent dogs did not improve their detour latency in either of the conditions. Remarkably, ostensive verbal utterances elicited longer relative looking time towards the demonstrator, cooperative dogs looked longer at the demonstrator, and longer looking time resulted in more successful detours.
Our study provides the first indication that functional breed selection had a significant impact on dogs' sensitivity to ostensive human communication, which, apart from being crucially important for social learning from humans, until now was considered as a uniformly present heritage of domestication in dogs.
通过观察从人类身上学习的能力被认为在经过适当社会化的狗身上同样存在。我们最近表明，合作工作犬能更有效地从人类示范者那里学习。我们假设功能品种选择可能会影响对人类引起注意行为的敏感性。因此，我们进行了首次关于狗的研究，比较了在社交学习场景中，说明性和中性言语交流的效果。我们使用透明 V 形围栏进行迂回，演示者使用说明性（用言语和特定的、引起注意的韵律来称呼接收者）或中性言语（单调地背诵一首短诗）。在两种条件下，演示序列的其他特征（手势、动作）保持相同。我们在三个 1 分钟的试验中测试了 70 只伴侣犬，它们来自 17 个合作品种和 16 个独立品种。为了获得奖励，狗必须绕过围栏。
合作犬在说明性和中性言语演示后，迂回潜伏期都有所改善。独立犬在任何一种情况下都没有改善迂回潜伏期。值得注意的是，说明性的言语表达引起了对示范者更长的相对注视时间，合作犬对示范者的注视时间更长，更长的注视时间导致了更成功的迂回。
我们的研究首次表明，功能品种选择对狗对说明性人类交流的敏感性有显著影响，这除了对人类的社会学习至关重要外，直到现在，还被认为是狗被驯化的统一遗产。
