PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Generalization, the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli, is one of the main cognitive abilities that make category formation possible and thus is a prerequisite for efficiency in learning. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience pervasive difficulty with producing generalized responses across materials, people, places, and contexts. Increasing evidence suggests that \"ASD-like\" social impairments appear endogenously and spontaneously in family dogs providing a high-validity model for understanding the phenotypic expression of human ASD. The present study aims to further investigate the dog model of ASD by the approach of searching for analogues in dogs showing \"ASD-like\" social impairments of cognitive phenomena in humans specific to ASD, specifically impairments of generalization abilities. We have tested 18 family dogs with formerly established \"ASD-like\" behaviour scores (F1, F2, F3) in a generalization task involving three conditions (size, colour and texture). We found a significant association between F1 scores and test performance as well as improvement during testing sessions. Our study provides further support for the notion that dogs with lower social competence-similarly to humans with ASD-exhibit attentional and perceptual abnormalities, such as being sensitive to minor changes to a non-adaptive extent.
摘要：
概括,对不同但相似的刺激做出相同反应的倾向，是使类别形成成为可能的主要认知能力之一，因此是学习效率的先决条件。患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的个体在材料中产生普遍反应时遇到普遍困难，人,地点,和上下文。越来越多的证据表明，“ASD样”社交障碍在家庭犬中内源性和自发地出现，为理解人类ASD的表型表达提供了一个高度有效的模型。本研究旨在通过在狗中寻找类似物的方法进一步研究ASD的狗模型，这些类似物在人类中表现出特定于ASD的认知现象的“ASD样”社交障碍。特别是泛化能力的削弱。我们在涉及三个条件（大小，颜色和质地）。我们发现F1分数与测试表现以及测试过程中的改进之间存在显着关联。我们的研究为以下观点提供了进一步的支持：社交能力较低的狗-类似于患有ASD的人类-表现出注意力和知觉异常，例如对非适应性程度的微小变化敏感。
