Recent evidence suggests that preverbal infants' gaze following can be triggered only if an actor's head turn is preceded by the expression of communicative intent [1]. Such connectedness between ostensive and referential signals may be uniquely human, enabling infants to effectively respond to referential communication directed to them. In the light of increasing evidence of dogs' social communicative skills [2], an intriguing question is whether dogs' responsiveness to human directional gestures [3] is associated with the situational context in an infant-like manner. Borrowing a method used in infant studies [1], dogs watched video presentations of a human actor turning toward one of two objects, and their eye-gaze patterns were recorded with an eye tracker. Results show a higher tendency of gaze following in dogs when the human's head turning was preceded by the expression of communicative intent (direct gaze, addressing). This is the first evidence to show that (1) eye-tracking techniques can be used for studying dogs' social skills and (2) the exploitation of human gaze cues depends on the communicatively relevant pattern of ostensive and referential signals in dogs. Our findings give further support to the existence of a functionally infant-analog social competence in this species.

Many argue that dogs show unique susceptibility to human communicative signals that make them suitable for being engaged in complex co-operation with humans. It has also been revealed that socially provided information is particularly effective in influencing the behaviour of dogs even when the human's action demonstration conveys inefficient or mistaken solution of task. It is unclear, however, how the communicative nature of the demonstration context and the presence of the human demonstrator affect the dogs' objectchoice behaviour in observational learning situations. In order to unfold the effects of these factors, 76 adult pet dogs could observe a communicative or a non-communicative demonstration in which the human retrieved a tennis ball from under an opaque container while manipulating another distant and obviously empty (transparent) one. Subjects were then allowed to choose either in the presence of the demonstrator or after she left the room. Results showed a significant main effect of the demonstration context (presence or absence of the human's communicative signals), and we also found some evidence for the responsemodifying effect of the presence of the human demonstrator during the dogs' choice. That is, dogs predominantly chose the baited container, but if the demonstration context was communicative and the human was present during the dogs' choice, subjects' tendency to select the baited container has been reduced. In agreement with the studies showing sensitivity to human's communicative signals in dogs, these findings point to a special form of social influence in observational learning situations when it comes to learning about causally opaque and less efficient (compared to what comes natural to the dog) action demonstrations.

Certain aspects of a demonstration have been shown to influence infants' interpretation of an observational situation and result in selective imitation. Studying social factors that trigger selective imitation may improve our understanding of how infants encode certain situations. However, only a few studies have investigated the possible interactions among these factors. In our study, 18-month-old infants (N=54) observed an adult demonstrator retrieve a toy from under an opaque ("baited") container by manipulating another transparent empty one. Infants were assigned to one of four conditions representing all combinations of two social factors: ostensive communication during demonstration (Communicative vs. Non-communicative) and presence of the demonstrator during reenactment (D-present vs. D-not present). Results suggest that infants' choice behavior was formed in two steps: during the demonstration and during the test phase. Furthermore, an interaction between the effects of the two levels was observed. Communication during the demonstration triggered imitative learning. Infants tended to copy the observed manipulation to learn the communicatively assigned way to reach the goal. This choice behavior was not influenced later by the presence or absence of the demonstrator. The non-communicative demonstration, however, did not elicit a particular learning mechanism. Therefore, in this situation, infants' choice behavior was affected by the demonstrator's presence or absence. Infants developed an individual solution and chose the baited container in the D-not present condition, indicative of emulation. In the D-present situation, they were more likely to reproduce the observed manipulation, which can be interpreted as a tendency to communicate with or conform to the demonstrator.

15 16Evidence suggests that infants and adults attribute different importance to certain object 17 properties when performing object-directed actions. Namely, infants tend to rely on 18 information about an object's location, whereas adults are more likely to base their actions on 19 its features. In this study, we tested whether the strategic choices of infants (aged 13 months) 20 and adults would be modified by the context of the demonstration. Participants watched as an 21 experimenter hid a ball under one of two different coloured containers, using either a 22 communicative or a non-communicative manner. Then, the locations of the two containers 23were changed out of sight of the participant. During the test, participants were encouraged to 24 look for the ball under one of the containers. We found that adults were more likely to follow 25 a feature-based strategy than infants. However, there was no effect of the context of the 26 demonstration, suggesting that communication may play different roles in encoding object 27 properties and directing overt behaviour. 28 29