Abstract
It has been suggested that dogs' remarkable capacity to use human communicative signals lies in their comparable social cognitive skills; however, this view has been questioned recently. The present study investigated associations between oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphisms and social behavior in human infants and dogs with the aim to unravel potentially differential mechanisms behind their responsiveness to human gaze. Sixteen-month-old human infants (N = 99) and adult Border Collie dogs (N = 71) participated in two tasks designed to test (1) their use of gaze-direction as a cue to locate a hidden object, and (2) their reactions to an aversive social interaction (using the still face task for children and a threatening approach task for dogs). Moreover, we obtained DNA samples to analyze associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the OXTR (dogs: −213AG, −94TC, −74CG, rs8679682, children: rs53576, rs1042778, rs2254298) and behavior. We found that OXTR genotype was significantly associated with reactions to an aversive social interaction both in dogs and children, confirming the anxiolytic effect of oxytocin in both species. In dogs, the genotypes linked to less fearful behavior were associated also with a higher willingness to follow gaze whereas in children, OXTR gene polymorphisms did not affect gaze following success. This pattern of gene-behavior associations suggests that for dogs the two situations are more alike (potentially fear-inducing or competitive) than for human children. This raises the possibility that, in contrast to former studies proposing human-like cooperativeness in dogs, dogs may perceive human gaze in an object-choice task in a more antagonistic manner than children.
Highlights
IntroductionDogs show various forms of strikingly human-like performance at the behavioral level (for a review see Hare and Tomasello, 2005), and this convergence in behavior is most marked in the social contexts that require dogs to interact with humans (Miklósi and Topál, 2013)
Dogs show various forms of strikingly human-like performance at the behavioral level, and this convergence in behavior is most marked in the social contexts that require dogs to interact with humans (Miklósi and Topál, 2013)
The present study explored associations between variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and reaction to an aversive social interaction as well as use of a gaze cue to locate hidden food in dogs and humans
Summary
Dogs show various forms of strikingly human-like performance at the behavioral level (for a review see Hare and Tomasello, 2005), and this convergence in behavior is most marked in the social contexts that require dogs to interact with humans (Miklósi and Topál, 2013). It has been proposed that dogs possess a sensitivity to human communicative cues that parallels that of human children (for a review see Topál et al, 2014) This similarity is likely to have important functions, as arguably, much of the higher-order cognitive skills of humans rest on the fundamental ability to participate in and make use of communicative interactions in a unique way (e.g., Boyd and Richerson, 1998; Csibra and Gergely, 2011). Topál et al (2008) have shown that children, after repeatedly observing that an object is hidden at one location (A), tend to erroneously search for the hidden object in its initial hiding location even after witnessing that the object has been placed in another location (B). Similar results were obtained with dogs using the same paradigm (Topál et al, 2009), suggesting comparable sensitivity to human communication in the two species, at least at the behavioral level
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