Kis Anna, Roper Hannah, Bolló Henrietta, Balogh Antónia, Gergely Anna, Topál József
Psychobiology Research Group, HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Budapest, Hungary.
ELTE-HUNREN NAP Comparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 23;15(1):26695. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-11192-7.
Side bias is often reported in canine cognition experiments when dogs' behaviour is tested in two-way choice tasks. Recently it has been proposed that side bias, which remains consistent over time and across different situations, may parallel a human psychiatric condition known as visual neglect. Here we tested an additional factor that could contribute to the development of side bias behaviour in dogs: task complexity. Subjects were tested in a series of two-way choice tasks of varying difficulty and the proportion of subjects showing side bias was compared across these tasks. Results showed that dogs were more likely to develop side bias in more complex situations, such as the food preference task, or in more unusual tasks, such as elbow pointing, compared to simpler tasks like sustained pointing. This suggests that, as expected, task complexity contributes to dogs' side bias, with side preference potentially being at least partly triggered by more challenging tasks that yield decreased reward.
在犬类认知实验中，当在双向选择任务中测试狗的行为时，常常会报告出现侧偏现象。最近有人提出，随着时间推移和不同情境下保持一致的侧偏，可能类似于一种被称为视觉忽视的人类精神疾病。在这里，我们测试了一个可能导致狗出现侧偏行为的额外因素：任务复杂性。对受试者进行了一系列难度不同的双向选择任务测试，并比较了这些任务中表现出侧偏的受试者比例。结果表明，与持续指向等较简单的任务相比，狗在更复杂的情境中，如食物偏好任务，或在更不寻常的任务中，如用肘部指向，更有可能出现侧偏。这表明，正如预期的那样，任务复杂性导致了狗的侧偏，侧偏好可能至少部分是由产生奖励减少的更具挑战性的任务触发的。
