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Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work

Attention is a central process of cognition and influences the execution of daily tasks. In humans, different types of work require different attentional skills and sport performance is associated with the ability to attention shift. Attention towards humans varies in dogs used for different types o...

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Autores principales: Rochais, Céline, Stomp, Mathilde, Sébilleau, Mélissa, Houdebine, Mathilde, Henry, Séverine, Hausberger, Martine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9312386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35877616
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269974
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author Rochais, Céline
Stomp, Mathilde
Sébilleau, Mélissa
Houdebine, Mathilde
Henry, Séverine
Hausberger, Martine
author_facet Rochais, Céline
Stomp, Mathilde
Sébilleau, Mélissa
Houdebine, Mathilde
Henry, Séverine
Hausberger, Martine
author_sort Rochais, Céline
collection PubMed
description Attention is a central process of cognition and influences the execution of daily tasks. In humans, different types of work require different attentional skills and sport performance is associated with the ability to attention shift. Attention towards humans varies in dogs used for different types of work. Whether this variation is due to the recruitment of individuals suitable for specific types of work, or to the characteristics of the work, remains unclear. In the present study, we hypothesized that domestic horses (Equus caballus) trained for different types of work would also demonstrate different attentional characteristics but we also explored other possible factors of influence such as age, sex and breed. We exposed more than sixty horses, working in 4 different disciplines, and living in two types of housing conditions, to a visual attention test (VAT) performed in the home environment. Individual attentional characteristics in the test were not significantly influenced by age, sex, breed or conditions of life but were strongly related to the type of work. Riding school horses showed longer sequences and less fragmented attention than all other horses, including sport horses living in the same conditions. Interestingly, sport performance was correlated with attention fragmentation during the test in eventing horses, which may need more attention shifting during the competitions. Working conditions may influence attention characteristics indirectly through welfare, or directly through selection and training. Our study opens new lines of thought on the determinants of animal cognition and its plasticity and constitutes a further step towards understanding the interrelationship between working conditions and cognition.
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spelling pubmed-93123862022-07-26 Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work Rochais, Céline Stomp, Mathilde Sébilleau, Mélissa Houdebine, Mathilde Henry, Séverine Hausberger, Martine PLoS One Research Article Attention is a central process of cognition and influences the execution of daily tasks. In humans, different types of work require different attentional skills and sport performance is associated with the ability to attention shift. Attention towards humans varies in dogs used for different types of work. Whether this variation is due to the recruitment of individuals suitable for specific types of work, or to the characteristics of the work, remains unclear. In the present study, we hypothesized that domestic horses (Equus caballus) trained for different types of work would also demonstrate different attentional characteristics but we also explored other possible factors of influence such as age, sex and breed. We exposed more than sixty horses, working in 4 different disciplines, and living in two types of housing conditions, to a visual attention test (VAT) performed in the home environment. Individual attentional characteristics in the test were not significantly influenced by age, sex, breed or conditions of life but were strongly related to the type of work. Riding school horses showed longer sequences and less fragmented attention than all other horses, including sport horses living in the same conditions. Interestingly, sport performance was correlated with attention fragmentation during the test in eventing horses, which may need more attention shifting during the competitions. Working conditions may influence attention characteristics indirectly through welfare, or directly through selection and training. Our study opens new lines of thought on the determinants of animal cognition and its plasticity and constitutes a further step towards understanding the interrelationship between working conditions and cognition. Public Library of Science 2022-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9312386/ /pubmed/35877616 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269974 Text en © 2022 Rochais et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Rochais, Céline
Stomp, Mathilde
Sébilleau, Mélissa
Houdebine, Mathilde
Henry, Séverine
Hausberger, Martine
Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
title Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
title_full Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
title_fullStr Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
title_full_unstemmed Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
title_short Horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
title_sort horses’ attentional characteristics differ according to the type of work
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9312386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35877616
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269974
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