Abstract:
Sensory laterality is influenced by the individual\'s attentional state. There are variations in the way different individuals of a same species attend to stimuli. When confronted to novelty, some individuals are more explorative than others. Curiosity is composed of sensation and knowledge seeking in humans. In the present study, we hypothesized that more curious animals, i.e., showing more sensory exploration would be less lateralized than quietly attentive individuals, performing instead more gazing behaviours. In order to test this hypothesis and its possible generality, we performed two studies using two animal models (dolphins and starlings) and two modalities (visual and auditory) of presentation of species-specific and non-species-specific stimuli. Both dolphins and starlings presented more gazes for the species-specific stimuli and more exploratory components for the non-species-specific stimuli. Moreover, in both cases, the non-species-specific stimuli involved more lateralized responses whereas there was no or less clear laterality for the species-specific stimuli. The more exploratory dolphins and starlings also showed a decreased laterality: the more \"curious\" individuals showed no laterality. Further studies are needed on characterization of curiosity in relation to attention structure. The present study suggests that individual variations in sensory laterality may help disentangle the subtle differences between curiosity, attention and boldness.
摘要:
感觉偏侧性受个体注意状态的影响。同一物种的不同个体对待刺激的方式存在差异。当面对新奇事物时,有些人比其他人更具探索性。好奇心由人类的感觉和知识寻求组成。在本研究中,我们假设更多好奇的动物,即,表现出更多的感官探索会比安静专注的人更少,而是表现出更多的凝视行为。为了检验这一假设及其可能的普遍性,我们使用两种动物模型(海豚和八哥)和两种模式(视觉和听觉)对物种特异性和非物种特异性刺激进行了两项研究.海豚和八哥都对物种特异性刺激表现出更多的凝视,对非物种特异性刺激表现出更多的探索性成分。此外,在这两种情况下,非物种特异性刺激涉及更多的偏侧反应,而物种特异性刺激没有或不太明显的偏侧反应。更具探索性的海豚和八哥也显示出减少的偏侧性:更“好奇”的个体没有显示偏侧性。需要进一步研究好奇心与注意力结构的关系。本研究表明,感觉偏侧性的个体差异可能有助于解开好奇心之间的细微差别,注意和大胆。