Department of Interdisciplinary Life Sciences, Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 6;14(1):20806. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-70700-3.
Domestic dogs have been shown to copy their caregiver's actions, including ones which are causally-irrelevant to a physical goal-a behaviour called "overimitation". In a new overimitation task with a non-food reward, this study investigated "causal misunderstanding"-falsely assuming causally-irrelevant actions to have functional relevancy-as an explanation for dog overimitation (N = 81). By providing dogs with prior experience of the task to learn about the consequences of its irrelevant box-stepping and relevant bucket-opening action to obtain a toy-ball, we tested whether and when dogs would copy their caregiver's irrelevant-action demonstrations. Dogs with and without prior experience were compared to a third (control) group of dogs, who had neither prior experience nor caregiver demonstrations of the task. Results revealed that the timing of overimitation, rather than its frequency, was closely related to dogs' prior experience: dogs with prior experience attended to their reward first, then interacted with the irrelevant box later ("post-goal overimitation"), while dogs without prior experience first interacted with the irrelevant box ("pre-goal overimitation"). Our results suggest that, when action consequences are understood, dogs are overimitating for a secondary social goal that is clearly distinct from the task goal of obtaining a physical reward.
家养犬已被证明会模仿照顾者的行为，包括与物理目标无关的行为——这种行为被称为“过度模仿”。在一项新的、涉及非食物奖励的过度模仿任务中，本研究调查了“因果误解”——错误地假设与因果无关的行为具有功能相关性——作为犬类过度模仿的一种解释（N=81）。通过为犬类提供任务的前期经验，让它们了解无关的箱子踩踏和相关的水桶开启动作的后果，以获得玩具球，我们测试了犬类是否会模仿照顾者的无关动作示范，以及何时会模仿。我们将有和没有前期经验的犬类与第三组（对照组）犬类进行了比较，这些犬类既没有前期经验，也没有照顾者对任务的示范。结果表明，过度模仿的时间，而不是频率，与犬类的前期经验密切相关：有前期经验的犬类首先关注它们的奖励，然后再与无关的箱子互动（“目标后过度模仿”），而没有前期经验的犬类则首先与无关的箱子互动（“目标前过度模仿”）。我们的结果表明，当犬类理解了行为后果时，它们会为一个明显不同于获得物理奖励的任务目标的次要社会目标进行过度模仿。
