Domesticated dogs (Canis familiaris) tend to follow repeated deceptive human cues even when food is visible

Abstract

There is abundant evidence that domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) readily follow pointing and other cues given by humans. But there has been much less research into the question of whether dogs can learn to discriminate between different humans giving repeated honest or dishonest cues as to food location, by ignoring the information imparted by the deceiver. Prior research has demonstrated that even after repeated exposures to deceptive cues with respect to food location, dogs failed to learn to ignore those cues completely. Kundey, De Los Reyes, Arbuthnot, Coshun, Molina, and Royer (2010) found the same outcome in a similar experiment. The purpose of the current experiment was to determine if dogs could learn to discriminate between an honest and a deceptive human by ignoring the deceiver's cues even when it was obvious that the container being pointed at was not baited by using two transparent containers. Eight dogs were tested. On 20 cooperator trials, the experimenter stood behind the baited container and cued the dog, located midway between the containers and 3 m away, to approach it. On 20 deceiver trials, a different experimenter stood behind the empty container and cued the dog to approach that container. Results replicated prior research in that, even though the containers were transparent, the dogs failed to learn to distrust the deceiver completely and went to the empty and indicated container on more than half of the deceiver trials.

Breed differences in social cognition, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)

“…Previous studies have shown that dogs are more likely to choose an empty bowl out of two choices if a human points towards it, even when they have seen that the other bowl has food in it [34][35][36][37] . Similar to the gesture tests, this test aims to measure social cognition.…”

The Role of Life History and Familiarity in Performance of Working and Non-Working Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in a Point-Following Task

“…Shortly later, Miklósi, Polgárdi, Topál, and Csányi [15] used the object-choice task on the first set of dog subjects; they found that dogs were able to reliably follow a point to find the rewarded container. Domestic dogs have also been found to follow human cues even when the cue is counterproductive, as some dogs chose empty cups, over cups with rewards [16]. Dogs have very powerful olfactory senses, and they will use this sense to find rewards in object-choice tasks [17]; however, when human cues are provided, dogs have been reported to privilege these cues over their own senses [18,19].…”