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An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task
The nature of mental representation of others plays a crucial role in social interactions. Dogs present an ideal model species for the investigation of such mental representations because they develop social ties with both conspecifics and heterospecifics. Former studies found that dogs’ preference...
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/PMC4524664/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26241747 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134575 |
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author | Abdai, Judit Gergely, Anna Petró, Eszter Topál, József Miklósi, Ádám |
author_facet | Abdai, Judit Gergely, Anna Petró, Eszter Topál, József Miklósi, Ádám |
author_sort | Abdai, Judit |
collection | PubMed |
description | The nature of mental representation of others plays a crucial role in social interactions. Dogs present an ideal model species for the investigation of such mental representations because they develop social ties with both conspecifics and heterospecifics. Former studies found that dogs’ preference for larger food quantity could be reversed by humans who indicate the smaller quantity. The question is whether this social bias is restricted to human partners. We suggest that after a short positive social experience, an unfamiliar moving inanimate agent (UMO) can also change dogs’ choice between two food quantities. We tested four groups of dogs with different partners: In the (1) Helper UMO and (2) Helper UMO Control groups the partner was an interactive remote control car that helped the dog to obtain an otherwise unreachable food. In the (3) Non-helper UMO and (4) Human partner groups dogs had restricted interaction with the remote control car and the unfamiliar human partners. In the Human partner, Helper UMO and Helper UMO Control groups the partners were able to revert dogs’ choice for the small amount by indicating the small one, but the Non-helper UMO was not. We suggest that dogs are able to generalize their wide range of experiences with humans to another type of agent as well, based on the recognition of similarities in simple behavioural patterns. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4524664 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45246642015-08-06 An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task Abdai, Judit Gergely, Anna Petró, Eszter Topál, József Miklósi, Ádám PLoS One Research Article The nature of mental representation of others plays a crucial role in social interactions. Dogs present an ideal model species for the investigation of such mental representations because they develop social ties with both conspecifics and heterospecifics. Former studies found that dogs’ preference for larger food quantity could be reversed by humans who indicate the smaller quantity. The question is whether this social bias is restricted to human partners. We suggest that after a short positive social experience, an unfamiliar moving inanimate agent (UMO) can also change dogs’ choice between two food quantities. We tested four groups of dogs with different partners: In the (1) Helper UMO and (2) Helper UMO Control groups the partner was an interactive remote control car that helped the dog to obtain an otherwise unreachable food. In the (3) Non-helper UMO and (4) Human partner groups dogs had restricted interaction with the remote control car and the unfamiliar human partners. In the Human partner, Helper UMO and Helper UMO Control groups the partners were able to revert dogs’ choice for the small amount by indicating the small one, but the Non-helper UMO was not. We suggest that dogs are able to generalize their wide range of experiences with humans to another type of agent as well, based on the recognition of similarities in simple behavioural patterns. Public Library of Science 2015-08-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4524664/ /pubmed/26241747 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134575 Text en © 2015 Abdai 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 Abdai, Judit Gergely, Anna Petró, Eszter Topál, József Miklósi, Ádám An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task |
title | An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task |
title_full | An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task |
title_fullStr | An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task |
title_full_unstemmed | An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task |
title_short | An Investigation on Social Representations: Inanimate Agent Can Mislead Dogs (Canis familiaris) in a Food Choice Task |
title_sort | investigation on social representations: inanimate agent can mislead dogs (canis familiaris) in a food choice task |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524664/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26241747 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134575 |
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