Dataset Information

Reassessing shelter dogs' use of human communicative cues in the standard object-choice task.

ABSTRACT: Unlike other animal species, domesticated pet dogs reliably use a range of human communicative cues to find a hidden reward in the object-choice task. One explanation for this finding is that dogs evolved skills for understanding human communicative behaviour during and as a result of human domestication. However, contrary to this domestication hypothesis, Udell et al. found domesticated shelter dogs failed to locate a hidden reward using a human's distal point cue, a cue pet dogs easily use. Hare et al., however, suggested the unorthodox methods used in Udell et al.'s object-choice task resulted in the shelter dogs failing to use human cues. In support of this, Hare et al. found that shelter dogs could use a human communicative pointing cue when tested with a standard object-choice task method. Yet in contrast to Udell et al., Hare at al. used a much simpler proximal cue that cannot exclude success based on stimulus enhancement rather than an understanding of the cue's communicative nature. We therefore addressed this issue by testing shelter dogs' abilities to use a range of proximal and distal human communicative cues in a standard object-choice task. We found shelter dogs could use proximal cues that may involve stimulus enhancement, but they continuously failed to use distal cues that excluded this possibility. Object-choice tasks with dogs typically involve non-vocalised human cues. We tested if vocalising would help shelter dogs to use distal cues. We found shelter dogs could use a vocalised distal continuous cue when the subject's name was called during cue presentation. It is therefore possible that vocalised cues help domesticated dogs learn about non-vocalised human communicative cues. Overall our results do not support that domesticated dogs' understanding of human communicative cues is a direct result of the domestication process.

SUBMITTER: Osborne T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6405081 | biostudies-other | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Publications

Reassessing shelter dogs' use of human communicative cues in the standard object-choice task.

Osborne Tara T Mulcahy Nicholas John NJ

PloS one 20190307 3

Unlike other animal species, domesticated pet dogs reliably use a range of human communicative cues to find a hidden reward in the object-choice task. One explanation for this finding is that dogs evolved skills for understanding human communicative behaviour during and as a result of human domestication. However, contrary to this domestication hypothesis, Udell et al. found domesticated shelter dogs failed to locate a hidden reward using a human's distal point cue, a cue pet dogs easily use. Ha ...[more]

PMID: 30845205

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Project description:Using social information is not indiscriminate and being able to choose what to copy and from whom to copy is critical. Dogs are able to learn socially, to recognize, and respond to dog as well as human emotional expressions, and to make reputation-like inferences based on how people behave towards their owner. Yet, the mechanisms dogs use for obtaining and utilizing social information are still to be fully understood, especially concerning whether emotional cues influence dogs' social learning. Therefore, our main aim was to test the hypothesis that an emotionally charged (negative, positive, or neutral) interaction with the demonstrator of a "V" detour task prior to testing would affect subjects' performance, by: (i) changing the value of the information provided by the demonstrator or (ii) changing the valence of the learning environment. Our experimental design consisted of three phases: pre-test (subjects were allowed to solve the task alone); emotional display (dogs watched the unfamiliar human behaving in either a positive, negative or neutral way towards their owner); test (demonstrator showed the task and subjects were allowed to move freely). Only dogs that failed in pre-test were considered for analysis (n = 46). We analyzed four dependent variables: success, time to solve the task, latency to reach the fence and matching the side of demonstration. For each, we used four models (GEEs and GLMMs) to investigate the effect of (1) demographic factors; (2) experimental design factors (including emotional group); (3) behavior of the dog; and (4) side chosen and matching. All models took into account all trials (random effect included) and the first trials only. Our findings corroborate previous studies of social learning, but present no evidence to sustain our hypothesis. We discuss the possibility of our stimuli not being salient enough in a task that involves highly motivating food and relies on long and highly distracting interval between phases. Nevertheless, these results represent an important contribution to the study of dog behavior and social cognition and pave the way for further investigations.

Dataset Information

Reassessing shelter dogs' use of human communicative cues in the standard object-choice task.

Publications

Reassessing shelter dogs' use of human communicative cues in the standard object-choice task.

Similar Datasets

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