Mindreading in a dog: an adaptation of a primate ‘mental attribution’ study

In the framework of a longitudinal case study on a male tervueren dog, Philip, the present paper was aimed to get a more sophisticated insight into the cognitive functioning of the dog's mind. Our experiment was designed to study the dog's ability to recognize knowledge or ignorance in others. The procedure used here was identical to that used in an ape-study (Gómez & Teixidor, 1992) and therefore provides the possibility for direct dog-ape comparison regarding their performance. Results show that similarly to the case with this “enculturated” orangutan, after few trials Philip was able to adjust his communicative behaviour to the state of knowledge of his human partner and cooperated successfully in the problem solving task (getting the ball). The exact mechanism underlying this communicative behaviour is still not clear, and both low- and high-level explanations are considered. We suggest that this approach gives a new possibility to conduct comparative studies aimed to understand the evolution of social cognition

What are you or who are you? The emergence of social interaction between dog and Unidentified Moving Object (UMO)

Robots offer new possibilities for investigating animal social behaviour. This method enhances controllability and reproducibility of experimental techniques, and it allows also the experimental separation of the effects of bodily appearance (embodiment) and behaviour. In the present study we examined dogs’ interactive behaviour in a problem solving task (in which the dog has no access to the food) with three different social partners, two of which were robots and the third a human behaving in a robot-like manner. The Mechanical UMO (Unidentified Moving Object) and the Mechanical Human differed only in their embodiment, but showed similar behaviour toward the dog. In contrast, the Social UMO was interactive, showed contingent responsiveness and goal-directed behaviour and moved along varied routes. The dogs showed shorter looking and touching duration, but increased gaze alternation toward the Mechanical Human than to the Mechanical UMO. This suggests that dogs’ interactive behaviour may have been affected by previous experience with typical humans. We found that dogs also looked longer and showed more gaze alternations between the food and the Social UMO compared to the Mechanical UMO. These results suggest that dogs form expectations about an unfamiliar moving object within a short period of time and they recognise some social aspects of UMOs’ behaviour. This is the first evidence that interactive behaviour of a robot is important for evoking dogs’ social responsiveness

Kutya, ember, csimpánz: Kognitív szempontok a fajok kommunikációs eltéréseinek értelmezésében

Az emberré válás evolúciós folyamatának egyik kulcsfontosságú tényezője, hogy a változó környezeti feltételek között fellépő alkalmazkodási kényszerek a hominidák szociális és kognitív képességeit olyan speciális fejlődési pályára állították (Csányi 2003), amelynek egyenes következménye volt egy szociális, fejlett kommunikációra és nyelvhasználatra képes faj, a Homo sapiens megjelenése (Szathmáry–Számadó 2008; Topál 2010). Annak érdekében, hogymegtudjuk, kommunikációs rendszerünk és egyéb kognitív képességeink mely aspektusai azok, amelyek specifikusan az emberi evolúció folyamán jelentek meg, elengedhetetlen az összehasonlító megközelítés, amely filogenetikai rokonainkat, a csimpánzokat (és más főemlősöket) vizsgálja. Továbbá fontos egy, az emberi környezetben élő és ahhoz evolúciós léptékben alkalmazkodott faj, amilyen a kutya, vizsgálata is, amely rávilágít, hogy ökológiai környezetünk és az ezzel járó szelekciós hatások milyen képességekmegjelenéséhez vezetnek

Kooperáció és kommunikáció az állatvilágban: játékelméleti vizsgálatok = Cooperation and communication in biology: game theoretical studies

Pályázatunk elsősorban a kooperáció eredetének számos aspektusát, továbbá a komunikációs rendszerek őszinteségét fenntartó mechanizmusok tanulmányozta. Az elméleti munkák mellett e témakörben humán és állatkísérleteket is elindítottunk. Rámutattunk az olcsó vagy költségmentes kommunikáció őszinteségét fenntartó ökológiai tényezőkre. Megmutattuk például, hogy az emberi kooperáció és az őszinte kommunikáció evolúciója szoros kapcsolatban lehet, illetve állati társadalmakban a kommunikácó őszinteségét a kompetíció erőssége is befolyásolhatja. Vizsgáltuk az ember és a kutya kooperációjának kommunikációs sajátságait. Megmutattuk, hogy a préda-perdátor vagy gazda-parazita kölcsönhatások ismerete szükséges számos kooperatív viselkedés evolúciójának értelmezéséhez. Például a predációs nyomás okozhatja a prédák altruista viselkedését, vagy a kasztrációs parazitát éppen a mutualista társ jelenléte szabályozza. Számos tanulmányban az egyedek térbeli elhelyezkedésének és korlátozott mozgásának a kooperáció evolúciójára kifejtett hatását vizsgáltuk. Több olyan munkánk is született, ahol a humán kommunikáció illetve kooperáció sajátságait a többszintű szelekciós modellek segítségével értelmeztük. Sikerült kiépítsünk egy számítógépes labort, mellyel a jövőben s humán etológiai kísérleteket tudunk végezni. A kutatás legfontosabb eszközének számító evolúciós játékelméletben számos alapkutatás jellegű eredményünk is született, a sztochasztikus elmélet fejlesztésétől a többfajos elméletig. | Our project mainly focused on several aspects of the evolution of cooperation and of the mechanisms maintaining honesty in communicating systems. Beside theoretical works we started animal and human experiments as well. We reveal ecological backgrounds maintaining honesty of cheap or costless communication in numerous systems. It is shown for example that the origin of human cooperation and reliable information processing can be in close connection to each other, and that strength of competition modifies the level of honesty in animal communities. We studied the characteristics of communication in the case of human-dog cooperation. We have shown that characteristics of predator-prey or host-parasite interactions are required to explain evolution of cooperative behaviour in numerous cases. For example, predation load can cause altruistic predator defence among preys, or a mutualistic competitor can control castrating parasites. Several papers focused on the spatial aspects and limited migration of individuals on the evolution of cooperation. Other works emphasized that characteristics of human cooperation can be explained by multilevel selection. We set up a computer lab, which could be a basis of a series of human behavior experiment in the near future. We have significant purely theoretical results in the field of our primary mathematical method, that is of evolutionary game theory; from the development of stochastic theory to the multi-species theory

Dogs are able to generalize directional acoustic signals to different contexts and tasks

Previous studies suggested that dogs are able to use both egocentric and allocentric cues spontaneously in specified spatial tasks. They can also learn rapidly ‘go-left/go-right’ tasks based on stimulus location but relying on stimulus quality. At the same time, relatively little research has looked at the possibility of whether dogs are able to solve a spatial problem based on previously trained signals in novel situations. In the present study we have examined whether dogs are able to rely on quality differences in sound stimuli for directional behaviour and to generalise this rule in different field conditions. First, we trained 16 adult pet dogs in the lab to go left and right based upon qualitatively different sound signals. After having reached the criterion, subjects participated in five field test sessions that included several novel targets (balls/trees/humans) at different distances (7–18 m) and angular deviations (36°–87°). We wanted to see whether these aspects of the novel context affect the dogs’ performance. After having reached the criterion, subjects participated in five field test sessions that included several novel targets at different distances and angular deviations. The test sessions were followed by a control session in the laboratory in order to exclude the Clever Hans effect. We found that dogs chose the target object that matched the sound signal significantly above the chance level in each test condition and also in the Clever Hans control. Their performance was not affected by different targets and distances, but decreased as a function of angular deviation. These results suggest that dogs are able to learn the ‘go left/go right’ task based on qualitatively different sounds and utilise this rule in novel situations. The angular deviation in choosing the correct target direction proved to be an important factor in the dogs’ performance in a novel context

Why Do Adult Dogs (Canis familiaris) Commit the A-not-B Search Error?

It has been recently reported that adult domestic dogs, like human infants, tend to commit perseverative search errors; that is, they select the previously rewarded empty location in Piagetian A-not-B search task because of the experimenter’s ostensive communicative cues. There is, however, an ongoing debate over whether these findings reveal that dogs can use the human ostensive referential communication as a source of information or the phenomenon can be accounted for by “more simple” explanations like insufficient attention and learning based on local enhancement. In 2 experiments the authors systematically manipulated the type of human cueing (communicative or noncommunicative) adjacent to the A hiding place during both the A and B trials. Results highlight 3 important aspects of the dogs’ A-not-B error: (a) search errors are influenced to a certain extent by dogs’ motivation to retrieve the toy object; (b) human communicative and noncommunicative signals have different error-inducing effects; and (3) communicative signals presented at the A hiding place during the B trials but not during the A trials play a crucial role in inducing the A-not-B error and it can be induced even without demonstrating repeated hiding events at location A. These findings further confirm the notion that perseverative search error, at least partially, reflects a “ready-to-obey” attitude in the dog rather than insufficient attention and/or working memory

A Simple Reason for a Big Difference: Wolves Do Not Look Back at Humans, but Dogs Do

The present investigations were undertaken to compare interspecific communicative abilities of dogs and wolves, which were socialized to humans at comparable levels. The first study demonstrated that socialized wolves were able to locate the place of hidden food indicated by the touching and, to some extent, pointing cues provided by the familiar human experimenter, but their performance remained inferior to that of dogs. In the second study, we have found that, after undergoing training to solve a simple manipulation task, dogs that are faced with an insoluble version of the same problem look/gaze at the human, while socialized wolves do not. Based on these observations, we suggest that the key difference between dog and wolf behavior is the dogs\u27 ability to look at the human\u27s face. Since looking behavior has an important function in initializing and maintaining communicative interaction in human communication systems, we suppose that by positive feedback processes (both evolutionary and ontogenetically) the readiness of dogs to look at the human face has lead to complex forms of dog-human communication that cannot be achieved in wolves even after extended socialization