Cognitive Origins of Ownership Concepts

所有权是人类生活的一个重要方面，它影响着我们对物品的行为、参与金融交易、在环境中移动和合作。大量的研究考察了所有权的心理基础，包括我们的所有权概念是如何在幼儿时期发展起来的。从这项工作中我们知道所有权影响认知。我们对拥有的物品表现出更强的关注和记忆，并对我们的财产赋予（有时是非理性的）价值。在拟议的研究中，我们将研究家养狗是否表现出与人类相同的与拥有的物体相关的一些认知特征。我们决定把重点放在狗身上是基于理论和实践的考虑。虽然狗在系统发育上比我们的灵长类同伴离我们更远，但它们与人类的关系是独一无二的。我们给予他们物品的所有权，就像我们对待孩子一样。有些人认为，从历史上看，狗提供的领土保护对财产所有权是必要的，因此，犬类驯化过程中的特征选择与我们自己所有权概念的发展交织在一起。通过一系列实验，我们将系统地检查宠物狗和工作狗是否对它们“拥有”的物体（即它们经常或经常被允许接触、喜欢和自愿接触的物体）表现出更强的注意力、记忆力和价值。从实际的角度来看，在对工作犬的训练和评价中，“玩具”经常被用作强化物和刺激物。研究人员希望对工作犬进行评估，例如，测量犬对玩具的关注（通过工作记忆任务），在无法解决的任务中获得玩具的持久性，以及取回玩具的持久性，这些都在一定程度上与后来的认证有关。然而，在这些任务中，狗与这些玩具的历史并没有被系统地操纵，因此我们不知道所有权以及相关的认知偏见是否会影响它们的表现。

Ownership is a key aspect of human life, affecting how we act on objects, engage in financial transactions, move within the environment, and cooperate. A rich body of research has examined the psychological basis of ownership, including how our concepts of ownership develop in early childhood. From this work we know that ownership influences cognition. We show enhanced attention toward, and memory for, owned objects, and place (sometimes irrational) value on our possessions. In the proposed studies, we will examine whether the domestic dog shows some of the same cognitive hallmarks related to owned objects as humans. Our decision to focus on dogs is based on both theoretical and practical considerations. Though dogs are more phylogenetically distant from us than our fellow primates, they are unique in their relationship with humans. We grant them ownership of objects in much same way as we do with children. Some have suggested that, historically, the territorial protection that dogs provided was necessary for the ownership of property, and thus, selection for traits during canine domestication was intertwined with the development of our own ownership concepts. Through a series of experiments, we will systematically examine whether pet and working dogs show enhanced attention, memory, and value toward objects that they `own' (i.e., that they have had consistent or frequent, permitted access to, favour, and voluntarily engage with). From a practical side, in the training and evaluation of working dogs, "toys" are often used as reinforcers and stimuli. Researchers who wish to evaluate working dogs measure, for example, dogs' focus on toys (via working memory tasks), persistence in obtaining toys in an unsolvable task, and persistence in retrieving a toy, all of which, to some extent, are related to later certification. Dogs' history with these toys has not been systematically manipulated in these tasks, however, and thus we do not know whether ownership - and related cognitive biases -- would affect performance.