Spontaneous preference for unpredictability in the temporal contingencies between agents' motion in naive domestic chicks.

ABSTRACT: The ability to recognize animate agents based on their motion has been investigated in humans and animals alike. When the movements of multiple objects are interdependent, humans perceive the presence of social interactions and goal-directed behaviours. Here, we investigated how visually naive domestic chicks respond to agents whose motion was reciprocally contingent in space and time (i.e. the time and direction of motion of one object can be predicted from the time and direction of motion of another object). We presented a 'social aggregation' stimulus, in which three smaller discs repeatedly converged towards a bigger disc, moving in a manner resembling a mother hen and chicks (versus a control stimulus lacking such interactions). Remarkably, chicks preferred stimuli in which the timing

SUBMITTER: Lemaire BS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9653227 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature