Methodological comparison of cancellation versus two-way choice spatial attention tests in humans and dogs

Frontiers in Veterinary Science

Veterinary Science

Henrietta Bolló¹  Eszter Radics¹  Anna Kis²  József Topál² 

[1] Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary;Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary;ELTE-HUNREN NAP Comparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest, Hungary;

关键词: canine model;    visual neglect;    spatial cognition;    dog;    side bias;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fvets.2023.1264151

 received in 2023-07-20, accepted in 2023-09-27,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionBehavioural problems in family dogs are amongst the leading reasons for relinquishment to shelters which adversely affects animal welfare. Recent research suggests that certain problematic behavioural patterns might be analogous to human psychiatric disorders. Veterinary diagnosis of such conditions, however, is scarce, probably due to the lack of appropriate measurement tools. The current study focuses on dog behaviour resembling the human hemispatial neglect condition, which manifests itself as a deficit in attention to and awareness of one side of the space.MethodsHealthy human subjects (N = 21) and adult family dogs (N = 23) were tested with tools aimed to measure spatial attention. Tests administered to humans included validated paper and pencil neuropsychological tools to assess hemispatial neglect (cancellation tasks), as well as the canine version of that task (visuo-spatial search task). Dogs were tested with the same visuo-spatial search task as well as a two-way choice task.ResultsResults show that both in case of dogs and humans the visuo-spatial search task detects individual variation in subjects’ side preferences. However, subjects’ performance in the different tasks were not related.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2023 Kis, Radics, Bolló and Topál.