Experience has a limited effect on humans' ability to predict the outcome of social interactions in children, dogs and macaques.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Donnier S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7718882 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:When viewing social scenes, humans and nonhuman primates focus on particular features, such as the models' eyes, mouth, and action targets. Previous studies reported that such viewing patterns vary significantly across individuals in humans, and also across closely-related primate species. However, the nature of these individual and species differences remains unclear, particularly among nonhuman primates. In large samples of human and nonhuman primates, we examined species differences and the effects of experience on patterns of gaze toward social movies. Experiment 1 examined the species differences across rhesus macaques, nonhuman apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans), and humans while they viewed movies of various animals' species-typical behaviors. We found that each species had distinct viewing patterns of the models' faces, eyes, mouths, and action targets. Experiment 2 tested the effect of individuals' experience on chimpanzee and human viewing patterns. We presented movies depicting natural behaviors of chimpanzees to three groups of chimpanzees (individuals from a zoo, a sanctuary, and a research institute) differing in their early social and physical experiences. We also presented the same movies to human adults and children differing in their expertise with chimpanzees (experts vs. novices) or movie-viewing generally (adults vs. preschoolers). Individuals varied within each species in their patterns of gaze toward models' faces, eyes, mouths, and action targets depending on their unique individual experiences. We thus found that the viewing patterns for social stimuli are both individual- and species-specific in these closely-related primates. Such individual/species-specificities are likely related to both individual experience and species-typical temperament, suggesting that primate individuals acquire their unique attentional biases through both ontogeny and evolution. Such unique attentional biases may help them learn efficiently about their particular social environments.
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Project description:Dogs' increased human-directed sociability compared to wolves may be the result of increased oxytocin system activity and decreased stress responses, but comparative studies accounting for life experience are lacking. We compared hand-raised, pack-living wolves' and dogs' behavior and hormone concentrations after interacting with a closely bonded and a familiar human. Both preferred the bonded partner, but dogs showed less variability in human-directed sociability than wolves. Physical contact was not associated with oxytocin but correlated positively with glucocorticoids in the pack-living animals when the human was not bonded. To clarify the role of life experience, we tested pet dogs and found that oxytocin concentrations correlated positively with physical contact with their owners, while glucocorticoids remained unaffected. Results show that, given similar experiences, wolf-dog differences in human-directed sociability and associated hormones are subtle and indicate that factors related to life as a pet dog rather than domestication account for oxytocin release during human-dog interactions.
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Project description:There is widespread acceptance that facial expressions are useful in social interactions, but empirical demonstration of their adaptive function has remained elusive. Here, we investigated whether macaques can use the facial expressions of others to predict the future outcomes of social interaction. Crested macaques (Macaca nigra) were shown an approach between two unknown individuals on a touchscreen and were required to choose between one of two potential social outcomes. The facial expressions of the actors were manipulated in the last frame of the video. One subject reached the experimental stage and accurately predicted different social outcomes depending on which facial expressions the actors displayed. The bared-teeth display (homologue of the human smile) was most strongly associated with predicted friendly outcomes. Contrary to our predictions, screams and threat faces were not associated more with conflict outcomes. Overall, therefore, the presence of any facial expression (compared to neutral) caused the subject to choose friendly outcomes more than negative outcomes. Facial expression in general, therefore, indicated a reduced likelihood of social conflict. The findings dispute traditional theories that view expressions only as indicators of present emotion and instead suggest that expressions form part of complex social interactions where individuals think beyond the present.
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Project description:Pro-social behaviors are defined as voluntary actions that benefit others. Comparative studies have mostly focused on investigating the presence of pro-sociality across species in an intraspecific context. Taken together, results on both primates and non-primate species indicate that reliance on cooperation may be at work in the selection and maintenance of pro-social sentiments. Dogs appear to be the ideal model when investigating a species' propensity for pro-sociality in an interspecific context because it has been suggested that as a consequence of domestication, they evolved an underlying temperament encouraging greater propensity to cooperate with human partners. In a recent study, using a food delivery paradigm, dogs were shown to preferentially express pro-social choices toward familiar compared to unfamiliar conspecifics. Using the same set-up and methods in the current study, we investigated dogs' pro-social preferences toward familiar and unfamiliar human partners. We found that dogs' pro-social tendencies did not extend to humans and the identity of the human partners did not influence the rate of food delivery. Interestingly, dogs tested with their human partners spent more time gazing at humans, and did so for longer after food consumption had ended than dogs tested with conspecific partners in the initial study. To allow comparability between results from dogs tested with a conspecific and a human partner, the latter were asked not to communicate with dogs in any way. However, this lack of communication from the human may have been aversive to dogs, leading them to cease performing the task earlier compared to the dogs paired with familiar conspecifics in the prior study. This is in line with previous findings suggesting that human communication in such contexts highly affects dogs' responses. Consequently, we encourage further studies to examine dogs' pro-social behavior toward humans taking into consideration their potential responses both with and without human communication.
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Project description:Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death due to a single infectious disease. Knowing when a person was infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) is critical as recent infection is the strongest clinical risk factor for progression to TB disease in immunocompetent individuals. However, time since M.tb infection is challenging to determine in routine clinical practice. To define a biomarker for recent TB exposure, we determined whether gene expression patterns in blood RNA correlated with time since M.tb infection or exposure. First, we found RNA signatures that accurately discriminated early and late time periods after experimental infection in mice and cynomolgus macaques. Next, we found a 6-gene blood RNA signature that identified recently exposed individuals in two independent human cohorts, including adult household contacts of TB cases and adolescents who recently acquired M.tb infection. Our work supports the need for future longitudinal studies of recent TB contacts to determine whether biomarkers of recent infection can provide prognostic information of TB disease risk in individuals and help map recent transmission in communities.
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Project description:Previous studies have demonstrated similarities in gazing behaviour of dogs and humans, but comparisons under similar conditions are rare, and little is known about dogs' visual attention to social scenes. Here, we recorded the eye gaze of dogs while they viewed images containing two humans or dogs either interacting socially or facing away: the results were compared with equivalent data measured from humans. Furthermore, we compared the gazing behaviour of two dog and two human populations with different social experiences: family and kennel dogs; dog experts and non-experts. Dogs' gazing behaviour was similar to humans: both species gazed longer at the actors in social interaction than in non-social images. However, humans gazed longer at the actors in dog than human social interaction images, whereas dogs gazed longer at the actors in human than dog social interaction images. Both species also made more saccades between actors in images representing non-conspecifics, which could indicate that processing social interaction of non-conspecifics may be more demanding. Dog experts and non-experts viewed the images very similarly. Kennel dogs viewed images less than family dogs, but otherwise their gazing behaviour did not differ, indicating that the basic processing of social stimuli remains similar regardless of social experiences.
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Project description:Human females exhibit greater social interest and skills relative to males, appearing in infancy, suggesting biological roots; however, male and female infants may be treated differently, potentially causing or amplifying sex differences. Here, we tested whether sex differences in social motivation emerge in infant monkeys (n = 48) reared in a controlled postnatal environment. Compared to males, females at 2-3 weeks looked more at conspecifics' faces (d = 0.65), especially the eyes (d = 1.09), and at 4-5 weeks exhibited more affiliative behaviors (d = 0.64), including gesturing, looking, and proximity to familiar and unfamiliar human caretakers. In sum, converging evidence from humans and monkeys suggests that female infants are more social than males in the first weeks of life, and that such differences may arise independent of postnatal experience. Individual differences in social interest have wide-ranging developmental consequences, impacting infants' social interaction quality and opportunities for learning. Understanding the evolution of sex differences and their developmental emergence is necessary to best support infants with varying levels of sociality.
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Project description:Vulnerability to emotional disorders including depression derives from interactions between genes and environment, especially during sensitive developmental periods. Across evolution, maternal care is a key source of environmental sensory signals to the developing brain, and a vast body of work has linked quantitative and qualitative aspects of maternal care to emotional outcome in children and animals. However, the fundamental properties of maternal signals, that promote advantageous vs pathological outcomes in the offspring, are unknown and have been a topic of intense study. We studied emotional outcomes of adolescent rats reared under routine or impoverished environments, and used mathematical approaches to analyze the nurturing behaviors of the dams. Unexpectedly, whereas the quantity and typical qualities of maternal care behaviors were indistinguishable in the two environments, their patterns and rhythms differed drastically and influenced emotional outcomes. Specifically, unpredictable, fragmented maternal care patterns translated into high-entropy rates of sensory signals to the offspring in the impoverished cages. During adolescence, these offspring had significant reductions in sucrose preference and in peer-play, two independent measures of the ability to experience pleasure. This adolescent anhedonia, often a harbinger of later depression, was not accompanied by measures of anxiety or helplessness. Dopaminergic pleasure circuits underlying anhedonia are engaged by predictable sequences of events, and predictable sensory signals during neonatal periods may be critical for their maturation. Conversely, unpredictability maternal-derived signals may disrupt these developmental processes, provoking anhedonia. In sum, high-entropy and fragmented patterns of maternal-derived sensory input to the developing brain predicts, and might promote, the development of anhedonia in rodents, with potential clinical implications.
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Project description:BackgroundProcalcitonin (PCT) is a valuable prognostic biomarker in human sepsis that is predictive of organ dysfunction, septic shock and mortality. Data on PCT in dogs is limited. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic value of baseline and serial PCT measurements in dogs with sepsis and to determine the association between PCT and sepsis severity and the presence of organ dysfunction. PCT concentrations were measured in citrated plasma samples collected from 53 dogs with sepsis at the time of admission (T0, n?=?53) and at 24 h (T1, n?=?35) and 48 h (T2, n?=?30) post-admission using a commercial ELISA. Dogs were classified by sepsis severity (sepsis without organ dysfunction; severe sepsis; septic shock) and outcome (survivors; non-survivors). Organ dysfunctions were recorded at T0 and during hospitalization, and the APPLEfast score calculated at T0. Healthy dogs (n?=?12) were used as controls.ResultsThere were 18 septic dogs without organ dysfunction, 24 dogs with severe sepsis and 11 with septic shock. Baseline PCT concentrations were significantly greater in dogs with sepsis compared to healthy controls (P?<?0.0001), and in dogs with septic shock compared to dogs without cardiovascular compromise (P?=?0.01). Baseline PCT was significantly correlated with organ dysfunction (P?=?0.003). Declining PCT concentrations were documented in survivors at T1 and T2 compared to PCT at T0 (P?=?0.0006), and PCT clearance at 24 h was significantly higher in survivors (n?=?38) compared to non-survivors (n?=?15) (P?=?0.037). Canine APPLEfast score was not predictive of sepsis severity, the development of MODS or outcome.ConclusionIn dogs with sepsis, PCT concentrations at hospital admissions are predictive of organ dysfunction and septic shock. Serial procalcitonin monitoring may offer valuable prognostic information in canine sepsis, wherein early decreases in PCT concentrations are associated with survival.
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