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Author Horn, L.; Range, F.; Huber, L.
Title Dogs’ attention towards humans depends on their relationship, not only on social familiarity Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication Abbreviated Journal Animal Cognition
Volume 16 Issue (up) 3 Pages 435-443
Keywords Domestic dogs; Social attention; Social familiarity; Dog–human relationship
Abstract Both in humans and non-human animals, it has been shown that individuals attend more to those they have previously interacted with and/or they are more closely associated with than to unfamiliar individuals. Whether this preference is mediated by mere social familiarity based on exposure or by the specific relationship between the two individuals, however, remains unclear. The domestic dog is an interesting subject in this line of research as it lives in the human environment and regularly interacts with numerous humans, yet it often has a particularly close relationship with its owner. Therefore, we investigated how long dogs (Canis familiaris) would attend to the actions of two familiar humans and one unfamiliar experimenter, while varying whether dogs had a close relationship with only one or both familiar humans. Our data provide evidence that social familiarity by itself cannot account for dogs’ increased attention towards their owners since they only attended more to those familiar humans with whom they also had a close relationship.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer-Verlag Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5667
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Author Huber, L.; Gajdon, G.K.
Title Technical intelligence in animals: the kea model Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue (up) 4 Pages 295-305
Keywords Animals; *Comprehension; *Intelligence; Models, Psychological; Observation; *Parrots; *Problem Solving; Psychological Theory; Social Environment; *Tool Use Behavior
Abstract The ability to act on information flexibly is one of the cornerstones of intelligent behavior. As particularly informative example, tool-oriented behavior has been investigated to determine to which extent nonhuman animals understand means-end relations, object affordances, and have specific motor skills. Even planning with foresight, goal-directed problem solving and immediate causal inference have been a focus of research. However, these cognitive abilities may not be restricted to tool-using animals but may be found also in animals that show high levels of curiosity, object exploration and manipulation, and extractive foraging behavior. The kea, a New Zealand parrot, is a particularly good example. We here review findings from laboratory experiments and field observations of keas revealing surprising cognitive capacities in the physical domain. In an experiment with captive keas, the success rate of individuals that were allowed to observe a trained conspecific was significantly higher than that of naive control subjects due to their acquisition of some functional understanding of the task through observation. In a further experiment using the string-pulling task, a well-probed test for means-end comprehension, we found the keas finding an immediate solution that could not be improved upon in nine further trials. We interpreted their performance as insightful in the sense of being sensitive of the relevant functional properties of the task and thereby producing a new adaptive response without trial-and-error learning. Together, these findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the distribution of higher cognitive skills in the animal kingdom by showing high levels of sensorimotor intelligence in animals that do not use tools. In conclusion, we suggest that the 'Technical intelligence hypothesis' (Byrne, Machiavellian intelligence II: extensions and evaluations, pp 289-211, 1997), which has been proposed to explain the origin of the ape/monkey grade-shift in intelligence by a selection pressure upon an increased efficiency in foraging behavior, should be extended, that is, applied to some birds as well.
Address Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria. ludwig.huber@univie.ac.at
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Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:16909237 Approved no
Call Number Serial 2085
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Author Watanabe, S.; Huber, L.
Title Animal logics: decisions in the absence of human language Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue (up) 4 Pages 235-245
Keywords *Animal Communication; Animals; Behavior, Animal/*physiology; Brain/physiology; Cognition/*physiology; Decision Making/*physiology; Evolution; Humans; *Language; *Logic; Problem Solving/physiology
Abstract Without Abstract
Address Department of Psychology, Keio University, Mita 2-15-45, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, Japan. swat@flet.keio.ac.jp
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:16909231 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2453
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Author Malavasi, R.; Huber, L.
Title Evidence of heterospecific referential communication from domestic horses (Equus caballus) to humans Type Journal Article
Year 2016 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 19 Issue (up) 5 Pages 899-909
Keywords
Abstract Referential communication occurs when a sender elaborates its gestures to direct the attention of a recipient to its role in pursuit of the desired goal, e.g. by pointing or showing an object, thereby informing the recipient what it wants. If the gesture is successful, the sender and the recipient focus their attention simultaneously on a third entity, the target. Here we investigated the ability of domestic horses (Equus caballus) to communicate referentially with a human observer about the location of a desired target, a bucket of food out of reach. In order to test six operational criteria of referential communication, we manipulated the recipient’s (experimenter) attentional state in four experimental conditions: frontally oriented, backward oriented, walking away from the arena and frontally oriented with other helpers present in the arena. The rate of gaze alternation was higher in the frontally oriented condition than in all the others. The horses appeared to use both indicative (pointing) and non-indicative (nods and shakes) head gestures in the relevant test conditions. Horses also elaborated their communication by switching from a visual to a tactile signal and demonstrated perseverance in their communication. The results of the tests revealed that horses used referential gestures to manipulate the attention of a human recipient so to obtain an unreachable resource. These are the first such findings in an ungulate species.
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ISSN 1435-9456 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Malavasi2016 Serial 6029
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Author Range, F.; Huber, L.
Title Attention in common marmosets: implications for social-learning experiments Type Journal Article
Year 2007 Publication Animal Behaviour. Abbreviated Journal Anim. Behav.
Volume 73 Issue (up) 6 Pages 1033-1041
Keywords attention; Callithrix jacchus; common marmoset; imitation; social learning
Abstract The question whether a certain species is or is not able to imitate has received much recent attention. However, the ability to copy a demonstrated action might depend not only on the imitative ability of the observer but also on its attention, a factor widely neglected in discussions and experiments. Since attention differs between species as well as between individuals, it is likely to influence the amount and type of information different species and/or observers may extract from a given demonstration. We studied attention in common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus. In a series of experimental sessions, individual marmosets watched different conspecific models that were searching, manipulating an object and feeding. The observers could see the demonstration through two observation holes, which allowed us to measure exactly how often and for how long they watched the model. Marmosets were more attentive towards conspecifics engaged in a problem-solving task than an exploring model. Individual variation in attention was large, ranging from less than 10% to over 49%. Attention also depended on the identity of the model with an increase in attention if it was of the opposite sex. Overall, attention of marmosets was short with a median duration of 6 s while the model manipulated an object. This study measured the real interest of the observer towards a model, which could be an important variable in social-learning experiments.
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Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4208
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