Inhibitory Control, but Not Prolonged Object-Related Experience Appears to Affect Physical Problem-Solving Performance of Pet Dogs.

Corsin A Müller,Zsófia Virányi,Ludwig Huber,Stefanie Riemer,Friederike Range,Elsa Addessi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147753

Abstract

Human infants develop an understanding of their physical environment through playful interactions with objects. Similar processes may influence also the performance of non-human animals in physical problem-solving tasks, but to date there is little empirical data to evaluate this hypothesis. In addition or alternatively to prior experiences, inhibitory control has been suggested as a factor underlying the considerable individual differences in performance reported for many species. Here we report a study in which we manipulated the extent of object-related experience for a cohort of dogs (Canis familiaris) of the breed Border Collie over a period of 18 months, and assessed their level of inhibitory control, prior to testing them in a series of four physical problem-solving tasks. We found no evidence that differences in object-related experience explain variability in performance in these tasks. It thus appears that dogs do not transfer knowledge about physical rules from one physical problem-solving task to another, but rather approach each task as a novel problem. Our results, however, suggest that individual performance in these tasks is influenced in a complex way by the subject’s level of inhibitory control. Depending on the task, inhibitory control had a positive or a negative effect on performance and different aspects of inhibitory control turned out to be the best predictors of individual performance in the different tasks. Therefore, studying the interplay between inhibitory control and problem-solving performance will make an important contribution to our understanding of individual and species differences in physical problem-solving performance.

Highlights

Human infants naturally develop an understanding of the physical world through observation of regularities which extend and/or confirm innate predispositions [1,2,3]
Performance in the physical problem-solving tasks did not differ between the three treatments
These results remained unchanged if subjects were excluded from the enriched group if they had not mastered the toys corresponding to the respective physical problem-solving task

Summary

Introduction

Human infants naturally develop an understanding of the physical world through observation of regularities which extend and/or confirm innate predispositions [1,2,3]. Playful exploration, including manipulating objects and bringing them in relation to each other, is an important basis for this development and allows detection of the objects’ affordances [4,5]. During such exploration, infants spontaneously search for causal explanations for their observations and engage in “hypothesis testing” activities to confirm their expectations [5,6,7,8,9]. In addition a causality bias during associative learning has recently been described for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): they learn about causal cues more quickly than about arbitrary cues [14]. Opportunities to manipulate objects, to learn about their affordances and to detect causal relationships may have substantial influences on animals’ cognitive skills in the physical domain

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Conclusion