Academic Journal
ASD-similar social behaviour scores affect stimulus generalization in family dogs
| Title: | ASD-similar social behaviour scores affect stimulus generalization in family dogs |
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| Authors: | Dorottya J. Ujfalussy, Anna Gergely, Eszter Petró, József Topál |
| Source: | Scientific Reports, Vol 14, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2024) |
| Publisher Information: | Nature Portfolio, 2024. |
| Publication Year: | 2024 |
| Collection: | LCC:Medicine LCC:Science |
| Subject Terms: | Generalization, Dog, Social competence, Minor differences, “ASD-like” behaviour, Medicine, Science |
| More Details: | Abstract Generalization, the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli, is one of the main cognitive abilities that make category formation possible and thus is a prerequisite for efficiency in learning. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience pervasive difficulty with producing generalized responses across materials, people, places, and contexts. Increasing evidence suggests that “ASD-like” social impairments appear endogenously and spontaneously in family dogs providing a high-validity model for understanding the phenotypic expression of human ASD. The present study aims to further investigate the dog model of ASD by the approach of searching for analogues in dogs showing “ASD-like” social impairments of cognitive phenomena in humans specific to ASD, specifically impairments of generalization abilities. We have tested 18 family dogs with formerly established “ASD-like” behaviour scores (F1, F2, F3) in a generalization task involving three conditions (size, colour and texture). We found a significant association between F1 scores and test performance as well as improvement during testing sessions. Our study provides further support for the notion that dogs with lower social competence—similarly to humans with ASD—exhibit attentional and perceptual abnormalities, such as being sensitive to minor changes to a non-adaptive extent. |
| Document Type: | article |
| File Description: | electronic resource |
| Language: | English |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| Relation: | https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-024-69610-1 |
| Access URL: | https://doaj.org/article/ba44a8f5357d42c687c3cfce7b61b8a4 |
| Accession Number: | edsdoj.ba44a8f5357d42c687c3cfce7b61b8a4 |
| Database: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
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| ISSN: | 20452322 |
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| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-024-69610-1 |
| Published in: | Scientific Reports |
| Language: | English |