What’s the point? Domestic dogs’ sensitivity to the accuracy of human informants

Abstract

Dogs excel at understanding human social-communicative gestures like points and can distinguish between human informants who vary in characteristics such as knowledge or familiarity. This study explores if dogs, like human children, can use human social informants’ past accuracy when deciding whom to trust. Experiment 1 tested whether dogs would behave differently in the presence of an accurate (vs. inaccurate) informant. Dogs followed an accurate informant’s point significantly above chance. Further, when presented with an inaccurate point, dogs were more likely to ignore it and choose the correct location. Experiment 2 tested whether dogs could use informant past accuracy to selectively follow the point of the previously accurate informant. In test trials when informants simultaneously pointed at different locations (only one of which contained a treat), dogs chose the accurate informant at chance levels. Experiment 3 controlled for non-social task demands (e.g. understanding of hidden baiting and occlusion events) that may have influenced Experiment 2 performance. In test trials, dogs chose to follow the accurate (vs. inaccurate) informant. This suggests that like children, dogs may be able to use informants’ past accuracy when choosing between information sources. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10071-021-01493-5.

Early-emerging and highly heritable sensitivity to human communication in dogs

“…A limitation of this work is that it does not identify the specific cognitive mechanism(s) supporting puppies' use of human communicative cues. Although previous studies with dog puppies 4 and adults 6,27,8,28 suggest that dogs are sensitive to the ostensive nature and communicative context of these signals and that performance does not depend on ''lower-level'' processes such as local enhancement, the mechanisms enabling dogs to interpret human communication remain heavily debated. [29][30][31][32][33][34][35] Importantly, however, the significance of our findings is not tied to questions about mechanism.…”

“…4,5 Like human children, dogs are sensitive to ostensive signals marking gestures as communicative, as well as contextual factors needed for inferences about these communicative acts. [6][7][8] However, key questions about potential biological bases for these abilities remain untested. To investigate their developmental and genetic origins, we tested 375 8-week-old dog puppies on a battery of social-cognitive measures.…”

Comparing wolves and dogs: current status and implications for human ‘self-domestication’

“…The animal is considered successful if it chooses the indicated pot. Although the task is thought to measure a species' understanding of human cooperative cues [13,14], it might instead be a measure of the tendency of the animal to comply with commands [88]. (B) Impossible task: the animal is presented with a reward that is accessible following some manipulation of the apparatus (e.g., removing the lid from a bin, pulling a string to obtain a piece of meat in a cage, or overturning a bowl under which food is hidden).…”

“…The claims of the superior socio-cognitive skills of dogs with humans are based on two controversial tasks: following human pointing gestures and the 'impossible task' (Figure 1). While dogs generally outperform wolves in pointing studies ( [13,14,45,64,83] but see [86,87]), pointing might not be perceived as cooperative, but as a command [88]. It might also require experience with humans [89,90], and selection for certain traits may enhance the performance of dogs [91].…”

Head-mounted mobile eye-tracking in the domestic dog: A new method

“… 2 Link to all data including data from past performances: https://www.osf.io/v8tdj/?view_only=2513d2cafc164586be7cf2fb580c5c0f . Prior data were collected as part of Espinosa and Buchsbaum (manuscript in preparation) and Pelgrim et al ( 2021 ). …”