Animal Welfare Program, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Sci Rep. 2024 Oct 15;14(1):24143. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-76283-3.
Learning is crucial for shaping domestic dogs' behaviour through life experiences, yet not all breeds exhibit the same learning aptitude towards a particular task. The current study's objective was to identify differences in behaviour and learning performance across and within five breed clades and elucidate the underlying factors contributing into these variations. Dogs (n = 111) from five breed clades (UK Rural, Retrievers, Asian Spitz, European Mastiff, and New World) participated in a virtual learning task with their owners. Owners completed validated questionnaires of Impulsivity and Reward Responsiveness. The learning task comprised of reinforcing an arbitrary behaviour (hand-touch) through multiple sessions of Acquisition (reinforcing the hand-touch), Discrimination (reinforcing the hand-touch on one of two hands) and Reversal Learning (reinforcing the hand-touch on the opposite hand), followed by a single session of Extinction (hand-touch not reinforced). Results showed notable differences across the studied breed clades in certain learning and behavioural components. However, the observed disparities may not be entirely attributed to inherent cognitive differences among the breed clades but rather potentially influenced by contextual factors such as the human-dog communication dynamics associated with breeds' cooperativity. Furthermore, breed clades differed in the contributing factors predicting individual learning performances, which could highlight the potential effect of breeds' historical function.
通过生活经验来塑造家犬的行为至关重要，但并非所有品种在特定任务中都表现出相同的学习能力。本研究的目的是确定五个品种分支之间和内部的行为和学习表现的差异，并阐明导致这些差异的潜在因素。来自五个品种分支（英国乡村犬、猎犬、亚洲尖嘴犬、欧洲獒犬和新世界犬）的 111 只犬与它们的主人一起参与了一项虚拟学习任务。主人完成了冲动性和奖励反应性的验证问卷。学习任务包括通过多个获取（强化手触摸）、辨别（强化双手之一的手触摸）和反转学习（强化相反手的手触摸）的阶段来强化一个任意行为（手触摸），然后是一个单一的消退（不强化手触摸）阶段。结果表明，在所研究的品种分支中，某些学习和行为成分存在显著差异。然而，观察到的差异可能不完全归因于品种分支之间固有的认知差异，而可能受到与品种合作性相关的人类-犬沟通动态等背景因素的影响。此外，品种分支在预测个体学习表现的因素上存在差异，这可能突出了品种历史功能的潜在影响。
