In many species, the allocation of exploration and exploitation responses to environmental stimuli is important for survival. In this exploratory study, we determined whether dogs (Canis familiaris) explored novel stimuli in a visual discrimination task using food reinforcers. Initially, the dogs were trained with two pairs of simultaneous visual discrimination tasks. Having achieved the learning criterion, the dogs were presented with a pair of stimuli including a novel stimulus and a previously reinforced stimulus in the probe trials (familiar stimulus). Dogs were reinforced by 50% for novel stimuli and 100% for familiar stimuli. The proportions of responses to novel and familiar stimuli in the probe trials were considered to reflect the propensity for exploration and exploitation, respectively. The five dogs tested selected the novel stimulus more frequently (in 22 of the 30 probe trials; binomial test, P = 0.016). Therefore, dogs prefer novel stimuli over familiar ones, suggesting that this species, which is less neophobic than wolves (Canis lupus), would likely allocate more responses to exploration. Comparisons among breeds or with wolves are warranted in future studies.

在许多物种中，对环境刺激的勘探和开发反应的分配对于生存很重要。在这项探索性研究中，我们确定了狗（Canis familiaris) 使用食物强化物探索视觉辨别任务中的新刺激。最初，这些狗接受了两对同时视觉辨别任务的训练。达到学习标准后，向狗提供一对刺激，包括新刺激和在探测试验中先前强化的刺激（熟悉的刺激）。狗对新的刺激增强了 50%，对熟悉的刺激增强了 100%。探测试验中对新奇刺激和熟悉刺激的反应比例被认为分别反映了探索和利用的倾向。测试的五只狗更频繁地选择新刺激（在 30 次探测试验中的 22 次；二项式检验，P = 0.016)。因此，与熟悉的刺激相比，狗更喜欢新的刺激，这表明这种比狼（犬狼疮）更不惧新的物种可能会对探索产生更多的反应。在未来的研究中，有必要在品种之间或与狼之间进行比较。