The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared

Inhibitory control i.e. blocking an impulsive or prepotent response in favour of a more appropriate alternative, has been suggested to play an important role in cooperative behaviour. Interestingly, while dogs and wolves show a similar social organization, they differ in their intraspecific cooperat...

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Autores principales: Marshall-Pescini, Sarah, Virányi, Zsófia, Range, Friederike
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25714840
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118469
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author Marshall-Pescini, Sarah
Virányi, Zsófia
Range, Friederike
author_facet Marshall-Pescini, Sarah
Virányi, Zsófia
Range, Friederike
author_sort Marshall-Pescini, Sarah
collection PubMed
description Inhibitory control i.e. blocking an impulsive or prepotent response in favour of a more appropriate alternative, has been suggested to play an important role in cooperative behaviour. Interestingly, while dogs and wolves show a similar social organization, they differ in their intraspecific cooperation tendencies in that wolves rely more heavily on group coordination in regard to hunting and pup-rearing compared to dogs. Hence, based on the ‘canine cooperation’ hypothesis wolves should show better inhibitory control than dogs. On the other hand, through the domestication process, dogs may have been selected for cooperative tendencies towards humans and/or a less reactive temperament, which may in turn have affected their inhibitory control abilities. Hence, based on the latter hypothesis, we would expect dogs to show a higher performance in tasks requiring inhibitory control. To test the predictive value of these alternative hypotheses, in the current study two tasks; the ‘cylinder task’ and the ‘detour task’, which are designed to assess inhibitory control, were used to evaluate the performance of identically raised pack dogs and wolves. Results from the cylinder task showed a significantly poorer performance in wolves than identically-raised pack dogs (and showed that pack-dogs performed similarly to pet dogs with different training experiences), however contrary results emerged in the detour task, with wolves showing a shorter latency to success and less perseverative behaviour at the fence. Results are discussed in relation to previous studies using these paradigms and in terms of the validity of these two methods in assessing inhibitory control.
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spelling pubmed-43407902015-03-04 The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared Marshall-Pescini, Sarah Virányi, Zsófia Range, Friederike PLoS One Research Article Inhibitory control i.e. blocking an impulsive or prepotent response in favour of a more appropriate alternative, has been suggested to play an important role in cooperative behaviour. Interestingly, while dogs and wolves show a similar social organization, they differ in their intraspecific cooperation tendencies in that wolves rely more heavily on group coordination in regard to hunting and pup-rearing compared to dogs. Hence, based on the ‘canine cooperation’ hypothesis wolves should show better inhibitory control than dogs. On the other hand, through the domestication process, dogs may have been selected for cooperative tendencies towards humans and/or a less reactive temperament, which may in turn have affected their inhibitory control abilities. Hence, based on the latter hypothesis, we would expect dogs to show a higher performance in tasks requiring inhibitory control. To test the predictive value of these alternative hypotheses, in the current study two tasks; the ‘cylinder task’ and the ‘detour task’, which are designed to assess inhibitory control, were used to evaluate the performance of identically raised pack dogs and wolves. Results from the cylinder task showed a significantly poorer performance in wolves than identically-raised pack dogs (and showed that pack-dogs performed similarly to pet dogs with different training experiences), however contrary results emerged in the detour task, with wolves showing a shorter latency to success and less perseverative behaviour at the fence. Results are discussed in relation to previous studies using these paradigms and in terms of the validity of these two methods in assessing inhibitory control. Public Library of Science 2015-02-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4340790/ /pubmed/25714840 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118469 Text en © 2015 Marshall-Pescini et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Marshall-Pescini, Sarah
Virányi, Zsófia
Range, Friederike
The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared
title The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared
title_full The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared
title_fullStr The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared
title_short The Effect of Domestication on Inhibitory Control: Wolves and Dogs Compared
title_sort effect of domestication on inhibitory control: wolves and dogs compared
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25714840
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118469
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