児童の発達における伴侶動物の影響: 人と動物の「絆」を生むものは何か

2016 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16H06691
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: 王 牧芸 東京大学, 大学院総合文化研究科, 特任研究員 (70781152)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-08-26 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: interspecific behaviour / bi-polar interaction / prosocial behaviour

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

In the current stage we tested the possible relationships between preverbal children and dogs. To understand the types of interactions occur between children and dogs, I recorded their free interactions and tested the pro-social behavior between them. I used a motion capture system to capture the movement of both species during free interactions, and found children and dogs spent similar amount of time synchronized with each other. There is no significant difference between who initialized the synchronization movements, indicate the interaction may be bipolar and not leading by a certain individual. We fixed a small wireless noninvasive monitor to the chest of the children and recorded their physiological condition such as heart rate and blood pressure. Recently, such equipment is also available in dogs, and we will be able to compare the physiological synchronization between children and dogs.

We also tested the prosocial behavior in both children-to-dog and dog-to-children situations with token exchange settings, in order to test whether they are willing to share benefit with each other. We found children are more willing to share benefits (food or toy) with dogs, however, the difference may due to the unbalance task difficulty in children and dogs. Dogs are difficult to learn token exchange paradigm, which may cost them too much attentional source and choose to select tokens at random. We may need a simpler test for dog prosocial behavior.

Current Status of Research Progress

2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.

Reason

Although the sequence of the experiment was changed due to technical issues, I successfully performed four sets of experiments (dog gazing test, free interaction test, two sets of token exchange test between child and dogs). These experiments covers most of the theme in the original second year plan, thus I state my progress fits the progress of my proposal. I was also accepted by two international conferences (International Neuroethology Conference and Animal Behavior Society) to give oral presentations with the data from this project, thus I state my work to be of interested by researchers in this field. I have prepared one manuscript ready to be published and now only waiting for the comments from my collaborators. With all the achievements, I propose that my work is on schedule.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

The aim of the second stage plan is to test the hypothesis that child has evolved to be instinctively attentive to living creatures (the biophilia hypothesis). I propose to investigate how children perceive animals and how animals influence their cognitive, social and emotional development. I will test the perceptual affordance of infant toward animals, and investigate the response to the movement of living beings and objects. I will measure the attentional shift, and by which movement animals and objects are attractive to them. I hypothesis that children's attention is drawn automatically by living systems which may be beneficial under evolutionary force. I will be able to test weather animals show same level of attraction as like in humans, and by which movements is of interest. I will also present different species of animals to see whether the level of attraction is the same. If the attraction of different animals is different, and the difference is not based on individual preference, it may be that different animals weighted differently under evolutionary force. I also plan to use several biological parameters to extract the relationship between animals of different species, such as physical movement, physiological response and vocal signals.