When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. But it is unclear from these everyday observations whether the dogs simply respond to the action outcomes or whether they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions. Are dogs able to distinguish intentional human actions from unintentional ones, even when the action outcomes are the same? We tested dogs’ ability to discriminate these action categories by adapting the so-called “Unwilling vs. Unable” paradigm. This paradigm compares subjects’ reactions to intentional and unintentional human behaviour. All dogs received three conditions: In the unwilling-condition, an experimenter intentionally withheld a reward from them. In the two unable-conditions, she unintentionally withheld the reward, either because she was clumsy or because she was physically prevented from giving the reward to the dog. Dogs clearly distinguished in their spontaneous behaviour between unwilling- and unable-conditions. This indicates that dogs indeed distinguish intentional actions from unintentional behaviour. We critically discuss our findings with regard to dogs’ understanding of human intentional action.

Recently, online testing has become an increasingly important instrument in developmental research, in particular since the COVID-19 pandemic made in-lab testing impossible. However, online testing comes with two substantial challenges. First, it is unclear how valid results of online studies really are. Second, implementing online studies can be costly and/or require profound coding skills. This article addresses the validity of an online testing approach that is low-cost and easy to implement: The experimenter shares test materials such as videos or presentations via video chat and interactively moderates the test session. To validate this approach, we compared children’s performance on a well-established task, the change-of-location false belief task, in an in-lab and online test setting. In two studies, 3- and 4-year-old received online implementations of the false belief version (Study 1) and the false and true belief version of the task (Study 2). Children’s performance in these online studies was compared to data of matching tasks collected in the context of in-lab studies. Results revealed that the typical developmental pattern of performance in these tasks found in in-lab studies could be replicated with the novel online test procedure. These results suggest that the proposed method, which is both low-cost and easy to implement, provides a valid alternative to classical in-person test settings.

No abstract

No abstract

MeasuresLinguistic and Cognitive Capacities __________________________________ Separate Analyses for Sample a _____________________________________________ Separate Analyses for Sample b _____________________________________________ Complete Output ANOVA Study 1 ___________________________________________ Study 2 __________________________________________________________________ Understanding the Subjectivity of Intentions -Supplement 2 2 Paper Pencil Version for AdultsTo validate the task and ensure that our task analysis fits with mature folk psychology, we administered a paper pencil version of the task to adult participants. Adults watched presentations of the scenarios. They answered on questionnaires in multiple choice-format. Method ParticipantsTwenty-four adults (36-95 months, M=66.26 months, SD=16.96; 35 male) were recruited on Campus. Design and ProcedureA 2 (Scenario: Two-Objects or One-Object) x 2 (Test Question: Belief or Intention) withinsubjects design was conducted. Participants received eight trials in counterbalanced order, two per combination of Test Question and Scenario. As in Study 1b, the 2 nd -order false belief test question was asked subsequent to the belief test question. Note that due to the paper pencil version all participants received the 2 nd -order belief test questions. Yet, only when the respective 1 st -order question was answered correctly we included the answer in our analyses. Scenarios and Test QuestionsParticipants received the same scenarios as in Study 1. However, in the adult-version these were not acted out. Adults watched animated PowerPoint-presentations. The verbal descriptions of the plot were given as written descriptions in the presentations. The same control and test question as in Study 1 were asked as part of the presentation. Participants answered to these questions on a printed out questionnaire. The multiple choice-format of this questionnaire offered as answer opportunities the two boxes (e.g. "The pink box." vs "The green box."). For the control question we offered the choice between "Yes." And "No." and for the 2 nd -order belief test question "Yes, I know that. " or "No, I don't know that.".