Dog breed behavior, dependence and reliance dimensions

We focused on behaviour-based analysis of the characteristic reliance of dog breeds on human behaviour. We utilized N=187 adult purebred dogs’ performance in a social learning task. Dogs observed a human demonstrator performing a detour around a transparent obstacle. With Principal Component Analysis, we established two behavioural dimensions: detour latency improvement and watching the demonstrator. Then, with K-means cluster analysis, we found six easily distinguishable clusters along these dimensions. The clusters showed significant differences in both behavioural dimensions, highlighting reliance-dependence types among purebred working dogs.

本研究聚焦于犬种对人类行为的特征性依赖的行为学分析。本研究纳入N=187只成年纯种犬在一项社会学习任务（social learning task）中的行为表现数据。实验中，受试犬需观察人类示范者绕行透明障碍物的操作流程。通过主成分分析（Principal Component Analysis），我们提取得到两个核心行为维度：绕行潜伏期改善情况与对示范者的注视行为。随后，基于上述两个维度，我们通过K-means聚类分析（K-means cluster analysis）得到六个易于区分的聚类组别。各聚类组别在两个行为维度上均存在显著差异，清晰揭示了纯种工作犬的依赖行为类型特征。