Data from: Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success

A continuing debate in studies of social development in both humans and other animals is the extent to which early life experiences affect adult behavior. Also unclear are the relative contributions of cognitive skills (“intelligence”) and temperament for successful outcomes. Guide dogs are particularly suited to research on these questions. To succeed as a guide dog, individuals must accomplish complex navigation and decision making without succumbing to distractions and unforeseen obstacles. Faced with these rigorous demands, only ∼70% of dogs that enter training ultimately achieve success. What predicts success as a guide dog? To address these questions, we followed 98 puppies from birth to adulthood. We found that high levels of overall maternal behavior were linked with a higher likelihood of program failure. Furthermore, mothers whose nursing style required greater effort by puppies were more likely to produce successful offspring, whereas mothers whose nursing style required less effort were more likely to produce offspring that failed. In young adults, an inability to solve a multistep task quickly, compounded with high levels of perseveration during the task, was associated with failure. Young adults that were released from the program also appeared more anxious, as indicated by a short latency to vocalize when faced with a novel object task. Our results suggest that both maternal nursing behavior and individual traits of cognition and temperament are associated with guide dog success.

在人类与其他动物的社会发展研究领域，始终存在一个长期争议的核心问题：早期生命体验对个体成年行为的影响程度究竟如何。此外，认知技能（即“智力”）与气质对个体获得成功结局的相对贡献，同样尚未明晰。导盲犬正是研究此类问题的理想实验模型。要成为合格的导盲犬，个体需完成复杂的导航与决策任务，同时需抵御干扰、规避突发障碍。面对此类严苛的训练要求，最终仅约70%参与训练的幼犬能够顺利完成全部流程并取得合格资质。那么，究竟哪些因素能够预测导盲犬的训练成功与否？为解答上述问题，本研究对98只幼犬从出生到成年进行了全程追踪。研究结果显示，母犬的整体抚育行为水平越高，幼犬训练失败的概率反而越高。进一步分析发现，若母犬的抚育方式需要幼犬付出更多努力，其后代成功完成训练的概率更高；反之，若母犬的抚育方式所需幼犬投入的精力较少，后代训练失败的风险则显著升高。在成年早期阶段，无法快速完成多步骤任务，且在任务中表现出高度固着行为的个体，其训练失败的风险更高。此外，被淘汰的受训幼犬在成年早期还表现出更高的焦虑水平：当面对新奇物体任务时，它们发出叫声的潜伏期更短。本研究结果表明，母犬的抚育行为以及个体的认知与气质特征，均与导盲犬的训练成功与否密切相关。