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...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4340790 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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