Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs

Most domestication hypotheses propose that dogs have been selected for enhanced communication and interactions with humans, including learning socially from human demonstrators. However, to what extent these skills are newly derived and to what extent they originate from wolf–wolf interactions is un...

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Autores principales: Range, Friederike, Virányi, Zsófia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3849518/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24363648
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00868
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author Range, Friederike
Virányi, Zsófia
author_facet Range, Friederike
Virányi, Zsófia
author_sort Range, Friederike
collection PubMed
description Most domestication hypotheses propose that dogs have been selected for enhanced communication and interactions with humans, including learning socially from human demonstrators. However, to what extent these skills are newly derived and to what extent they originate from wolf–wolf interactions is unclear. In order to test for the possible origins of dog social cognition, we need to compare the interactions of wolves and dogs with humans and with conspecifics. Here, we tested identically raised and kept juvenile wolves and dogs in a social learning task with human and conspecific demonstrators. Using a local enhancement task, we found that both wolves and dogs benefitted from a demonstration independent of the demonstrator species in comparison to a control, no demonstration condition. Interestingly, if the demonstrator only pretended to hide food at the target location, wolves and dogs reacted differently: while dogs differentiated between this without-food and with-food demonstration independent of the demonstrator species, wolves only did so in case of human demonstrators. We attribute this finding to wolves being more attentive toward behavioral details of the conspecific models than the dogs: although the demonstrator dogs were trained to execute the demonstration, they disliked the food reward, which might have decreased the interest of the wolves in finding the food reward. Overall, these results suggest that dogs but also wolves can use information provided by both human and conspecific demonstrators in a local enhancement task. Therefore we suggest that a more fine-scale analysis of dog and wolf social learning is needed to determine the effects of domestication.
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spelling pubmed-38495182013-12-20 Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs Range, Friederike Virányi, Zsófia Front Psychol Psychology Most domestication hypotheses propose that dogs have been selected for enhanced communication and interactions with humans, including learning socially from human demonstrators. However, to what extent these skills are newly derived and to what extent they originate from wolf–wolf interactions is unclear. In order to test for the possible origins of dog social cognition, we need to compare the interactions of wolves and dogs with humans and with conspecifics. Here, we tested identically raised and kept juvenile wolves and dogs in a social learning task with human and conspecific demonstrators. Using a local enhancement task, we found that both wolves and dogs benefitted from a demonstration independent of the demonstrator species in comparison to a control, no demonstration condition. Interestingly, if the demonstrator only pretended to hide food at the target location, wolves and dogs reacted differently: while dogs differentiated between this without-food and with-food demonstration independent of the demonstrator species, wolves only did so in case of human demonstrators. We attribute this finding to wolves being more attentive toward behavioral details of the conspecific models than the dogs: although the demonstrator dogs were trained to execute the demonstration, they disliked the food reward, which might have decreased the interest of the wolves in finding the food reward. Overall, these results suggest that dogs but also wolves can use information provided by both human and conspecific demonstrators in a local enhancement task. Therefore we suggest that a more fine-scale analysis of dog and wolf social learning is needed to determine the effects of domestication. Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-12-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3849518/ /pubmed/24363648 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00868 Text en Copyright © 2013 Range and Virányi. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Range, Friederike
Virányi, Zsófia
Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
title Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
title_full Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
title_fullStr Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
title_full_unstemmed Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
title_short Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
title_sort social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3849518/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24363648
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00868
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