“Do not choose as I do!” – Dogs avoid the food that is indicated by another dog's gaze in a two-object choice task

Bálint, Anna; Faragó, Tamás; Meike, Zemihn; Lenkei, Rita; Miklósi, Ádám; Pongrácz, Péter

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2015.06.005

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(53 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It has been proposed that dogs outperform chimpanzees in locating hidden food based on human-given cues because they better understand the cooperative, food-sharing message of pointing and gazing than chimpanzees, who use such cues more in competitive contexts ( Cooperative Communicative Gaze Hypothesis [ 29 , 38 , 39 ]). In line with our results, also former studies had found that dogs avoid a food location a human or a conspecific had looked at beforehand [ 32 , 35 , 40 ]. Based on findings that dogs avoid the food location someone else looked at beforehand, we propose that dogs may interpret gaze as an intentional cue, or at least as a behavioural cue that reliably indicates others' further actions ( Intentional Gaze Cue Hypothesis ).…”

Section: Experiments 2: Gaze-following and Choice In An Object-choice supporting

confidence: 93%

Do pet dogs ( Canis familiaris ) follow ostensive and non-ostensive human gaze to distant space and to objects?

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Dogs are renowned for being skilful at using human-given communicative cues such as pointing. Results are contradictory, however, when it comes to dogs' following human gaze, probably due to methodological discrepancies. Here we investigated whether dogs follow human gaze to one of two food locations better than into distant space even after comparable pre-training. In Experiments 1 and 2, the gazing direction of dogs was recorded in a gaze-following into distant space and in an object-choice task where no choice was allowed, in order to allow a direct comparison between tasks, varying the ostensive nature of the gazes. We found that dogs only followed repeated ostensive human gaze into distant space, whereas they followed all gaze cues in the object-choice task. Dogs followed human gaze better in the object-choice task than when there was no obvious target to look at. In Experiment 3, dogs were tested in another object-choice task and were allowed to approach a container. Ostensive cues facilitated the dogs’ following gaze with gaze as well as their choices: we found that dogs in the ostensive group chose the indicated container at chance level, whereas they avoided this container in the non-ostensive group. We propose that dogs may perceive the object-choice task as a competition over food and may interpret non-ostensive gaze as an intentional cue that indicates the experimenter's interest in the food location she has looked at. Whether ostensive cues simply mitigate the competitive perception of this situation or they alter how dogs interpret communicative gaze needs further investigation. Our findings also show that following gaze with one's gaze and actually choosing one of the two containers in an object-choice task need to be considered as different variables. The present study clarifies a number of questions related to gaze-following in dogs and adds to a growing body of evidence showing that human ostensive cues can strongly modify dog behaviour.

show abstract

Section: Experiments 2: Gaze-following and Choice In An Object-choice supporting

confidence: 93%

Do pet dogs ( Canis familiaris ) follow ostensive and non-ostensive human gaze to distant space and to objects?

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The number of correct choices should be highest in the realistic condition and lowest in the 'Inverted' condition, while performance in the sudden appearance conditions might be influenced by the amount of 'surprise' (SOB) that dogs would show. We also would not expect dogs to have more correct trials in the beginning or the end of the sessions (in accordance with several other studies, employing repeated trials with two-way choice response upon human or conspecific cueing, for example, Bálint et al, 2015;Hegedüs, Bálint, Miklósi, & Pongrácz, 2013;Pongrácz, Gácsi, Hegedüs, Péter, & Miklósi, 2013), nor would we expect the demonstrator's path having an effect on dogs' chance for finding the target.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Familiarity with images affects how dogs (Canis familiaris) process life-size video projections of humans

Pongrácz

Andreas

Miklósi

2018

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A central problem of behavioural studies providing artificial visual stimuli for non-human animals is to determine how subjects perceive and process these stimuli. Especially in the case of videos, it is important to ascertain that animals perceive the actual content of the images and are not just reacting to the motion cues in the presentation. In this study, we set out to investigate how dogs process life-sized videos. We aimed to find out whether dogs perceive the actual content of video images or whether they only react to the videos as a set of dynamic visual elements. For this purpose, dogs were presented with an object search task where a life-sized projected human was hiding a target object. The videos were either normally oriented or displayed upside down, and we analysed dogs' reactions towards the projector screen after the video presentations, and their performance in the search task. Results indicated that in the case of the normally oriented videos, dogs spontaneously perceived the actual content of the images. However, the 'Inverted' videos were first processed as a set of unrelated visual elements, and only after some exposure to these videos did the dogs show signs of perceiving the unusual configuration of the depicted scene. Our most important conclusion was that dogs process the same type of artificial visual stimuli in different ways, depending on the familiarity of the depicted scene, and that the processing mode can change with exposure to unfamiliar stimuli.

show abstract

“…No research has specifically addressed, however, whether wolves can go beyond attending to others’ behaviour and infer the intention underlying this behaviour. Studies show that dogs do not differentiate between humans’ intentional and accidental actions 21 – 23 , but may interpret gaze as a cue of someone’s intention to approach a certain object 8 , 24 . Due to the limited data comparing wolves’ and dogs’ understanding of behavioural cues, it is currently unknown whether and how domestication has affected this domain of social cognition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of domestication and ontogeny on cognition in dogs and wolves

Lampe

Bräuer

Kaminski

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cognition is one of the most flexible tools enabling adaptation to environmental variation. Living close to humans is thought to influence social as well as physical cognition of animals throughout domestication and ontogeny. Here, we investigated to what extent physical cognition and two domains of social cognition of dogs have been affected by domestication and ontogeny. To address the effects of domestication, we compared captive wolves (n = 12) and dogs (n = 14) living in packs under the same conditions. To explore developmental effects, we compared these dogs to pet dogs (n = 12) living in human families. The animals were faced with a series of object-choice tasks, in which their response to communicative, behavioural and causal cues was tested. We observed that wolves outperformed dogs in their ability to follow causal cues, suggesting that domestication altered specific skills relating to this domain, whereas developmental effects had surprisingly no influence. All three groups performed similarly in the communicative and behavioural conditions, suggesting higher ontogenetic flexibility in the two social domains. These differences across cognitive domains need to be further investigated, by comparing domestic and non-domesticated animals living in varying conditions.

show abstract

“Do not choose as I do!” – Dogs avoid the food that is indicated by another dog's gaze in a two-object choice task

Cited by 12 publications

References 43 publications

Do pet dogs ( Canis familiaris ) follow ostensive and non-ostensive human gaze to distant space and to objects?

Do pet dogs ( Canis familiaris ) follow ostensive and non-ostensive human gaze to distant space and to objects?

Familiarity with images affects how dogs (Canis familiaris) process life-size video projections of humans

The effects of domestication and ontogeny on cognition in dogs and wolves

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About