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Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals

In humans, numerical estimation is affected by perceptual biases, such as those originating from the spatial arrangement of elements. Different animal species can also make relative quantity judgements. This includes dogs, who have been proposed as a good model for comparative neuroscience. However,...

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Autores principales: Lõoke, Miina, Marinelli, Lieta, Agrillo, Christian, Guérineau, Cécile, Mongillo, Paolo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8639746/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34857858
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02791-1
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author Lõoke, Miina
Marinelli, Lieta
Agrillo, Christian
Guérineau, Cécile
Mongillo, Paolo
author_facet Lõoke, Miina
Marinelli, Lieta
Agrillo, Christian
Guérineau, Cécile
Mongillo, Paolo
author_sort Lõoke, Miina
collection PubMed
description In humans, numerical estimation is affected by perceptual biases, such as those originating from the spatial arrangement of elements. Different animal species can also make relative quantity judgements. This includes dogs, who have been proposed as a good model for comparative neuroscience. However, dogs do not show the same perceptual biases observed in humans. Thus, the exact perceptual/cognitive mechanisms underlying quantity estimations in dogs and their degree of similarity with humans are still a matter of debate. Here we explored whether dogs are susceptible to the connectedness illusion, an illusion based on the tendency to underestimate the quantity of interconnected items. Dogs were first trained to choose the larger of two food arrays. Then, they were presented with two arrays containing the same quantity of food, of which one had items interconnected by lines. Dogs significantly selected the array with unconnected items, suggesting that, like in humans, connectedness determines underestimation biases, possibly disrupting the perceptual system’s ability to segment the display into discrete objects. The similarity in dogs’ and humans’ susceptibility to the connectedness, but not to other numerical illusions, suggests that different mechanisms are involved in the estimation of quantity of stimuli with different characteristics.
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spelling pubmed-86397462021-12-06 Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals Lõoke, Miina Marinelli, Lieta Agrillo, Christian Guérineau, Cécile Mongillo, Paolo Sci Rep Article In humans, numerical estimation is affected by perceptual biases, such as those originating from the spatial arrangement of elements. Different animal species can also make relative quantity judgements. This includes dogs, who have been proposed as a good model for comparative neuroscience. However, dogs do not show the same perceptual biases observed in humans. Thus, the exact perceptual/cognitive mechanisms underlying quantity estimations in dogs and their degree of similarity with humans are still a matter of debate. Here we explored whether dogs are susceptible to the connectedness illusion, an illusion based on the tendency to underestimate the quantity of interconnected items. Dogs were first trained to choose the larger of two food arrays. Then, they were presented with two arrays containing the same quantity of food, of which one had items interconnected by lines. Dogs significantly selected the array with unconnected items, suggesting that, like in humans, connectedness determines underestimation biases, possibly disrupting the perceptual system’s ability to segment the display into discrete objects. The similarity in dogs’ and humans’ susceptibility to the connectedness, but not to other numerical illusions, suggests that different mechanisms are involved in the estimation of quantity of stimuli with different characteristics. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8639746/ /pubmed/34857858 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02791-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Lõoke, Miina
Marinelli, Lieta
Agrillo, Christian
Guérineau, Cécile
Mongillo, Paolo
Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
title Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
title_full Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
title_fullStr Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
title_full_unstemmed Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
title_short Dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
title_sort dogs (canis familiaris) underestimate the quantity of connected items: first demonstration of susceptibility to the connectedness illusion in non-human animals
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8639746/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34857858
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02791-1
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