Abstract:
When pre-treated with social stimuli prior to testing, dogs are more susceptible to human influence in a food preference task. This means, after a positive social interaction they are more willing to choose the smaller amount of food indicated by the human, as opposed to their baseline preference for the bigger amount. In the current study we investigate if and how various forms of social interaction modulate choices in the same social susceptibility task, testing dogs with varying early life history (pet dogs, therapy dogs, former shelter dogs). In line with previous studies, dogs in general were found to be susceptible to human influence as reflected in the reduced number of \"bigger\" choices in the human influence, compared to baseline, trials. This was true not only for pet dogs with a normal life history, but also for dogs adopted from a shelter. Therapy dogs, however, did not uniformly change their preference for the bigger quantity of food in the human influence trials; they only did so if prior to testing they had been pre-treated with social stimuli by their owner (but not by a stranger). Pet dogs were also more influenced after pre-treatment with social stimuli by their owner compared to ignoring and separation; however after pre-treatment by a stranger their behaviour did not differ from ignoring and separation. Former shelter dogs on the other hand were equally influenced regardless of pre-treatment by owner versus stranger. In summary these results show that dogs\' social susceptibility is modulated by both interactions immediately preceding the test as well as by long term social experiences.
摘要:
当在测试之前用社交刺激进行预处理时,在食物偏好任务中,狗更容易受到人类影响。这意味着,在积极的社会互动之后,他们更愿意选择人类所指示的少量食物,与他们对更大金额的基线偏好相反。在当前的研究中,我们调查了各种形式的社会互动是否以及如何在同一社会易感性任务中调节选择,测试具有不同早期生活史的狗(宠物狗,治疗犬,以前的收容所狗)。根据以前的研究,一般来说,狗容易受到人类影响,这反映在人类影响中“更大”选择的数量减少,与基线相比,试验。这不仅适用于有正常生活史的宠物狗,也适用于从收容所收养的狗。治疗犬,然而,在人类影响试验中,他们并没有统一改变他们对更大量食物的偏好;只有在测试之前,他们已经被主人(但不是陌生人)用社交刺激进行了预处理,他们才这样做。与忽略和分离相比,宠物狗在主人进行社交刺激预处理后受到的影响更大;但是,在陌生人进行预处理后,他们的行为与忽略和分离没有区别。另一方面,无论主人还是陌生人的预处理,前收容所的狗都受到同样的影响。总之,这些结果表明,狗的社会易感性受到测试前的相互作用以及长期的社会经验的调节。