Dogs, Canis familiaris, communicate with humans to request but not to inform

Dog communication motivation

Juliane Kaminski, Martina Neumann, Juliane Bräuer, Josep Call, Michael Tomasello

Dogs, Canis familiaris, communicate with humans to request but not to inform

Animal Behaviour, Volume 82, Issue 4, October 2011, Pages 651–658

ABSTRACT

Dogs are especially skilful at comprehending human communicative signals. This raises the question of whether they are also able to produce such signals flexibly, specifically, whether they helpfully produce indicative (‘showing’) behaviours to inform an ignorant human. In experiment 1, dogs indicated the location of an object more frequently when it was something they wanted themselves than when it was something the human wanted. There was some suggestion that this might be different when the human was their owner. So in experiment 2 we investigated whether dogs could understand when the owner needed helpful information to find a particular object (out of two) that they needed. They did not. Our findings, therefore, do not support the hypothesis that dogs communicate with humans to inform them of things they do not know.

Social eavesdropping in the domestic dog

Canine Eavesdropping 

S. Marshall-Pescini, C. Passalacqua, A. Ferrario, P. Valsecchi, E. Prato-Previde

Social eavesdropping in the domestic dog

Animal Behaviour, Volume 81, Issue 6, June 2011, Pages 1177–1183

ABSTRACT

Eavesdropping on third-party interactions has been observed in a number of species and is considered an important source of information in decision-making processes relating to fighting and mate choice. Human beings, however, use publicly available information flexibly in many different contexts including assessing others’ altruistic tendencies, which may in turn inform their choice of the most appropriate cooperative partner. We assessed whether dogs, Canis familiaris, were capable of discerning a generous versus selfish food-sharing interaction between humans, and investigated which communicative cues (voice versus gestures) may be more salient for them. Importantly a control condition was included to ascertain whether it was in fact the interaction between individuals as opposed to the direct actions of the actors that the dogs evaluated. We found that the dogs were capable of eavesdropping on human food-sharing interactions, and vocal communication was particularly important to convey the human’s cooperative versus noncooperative intent.

Dogs, Canis familiaris, communicate with humans to request but not to inform

Juliane Kaminski, Martina Neumann, Juliane Bräuer, Josep Call, Michael Tomasello

Dogs, Canis familiaris, communicate with humans to request but not to inform

Animal Behaviour, Volume 82, Issue 4, October 2011, Pages 651–658

ABSTRACT

Dogs are especially skilful at comprehending human communicative signals. This raises the question of whether they are also able to produce such signals flexibly, specifically, whether they helpfully produce indicative (‘showing’) behaviours to inform an ignorant human. In experiment 1, dogs indicated the location of an object more frequently when it was something they wanted themselves than when it was something the human wanted. There was some suggestion that this might be different when the human was their owner. So in experiment 2 we investigated whether dogs could understand when the owner needed helpful information to find a particular object (out of two) that they needed. They did not. Our findings, therefore, do not support the hypothesis that dogs communicate with humans to inform them of things they do not know.

Understanding of human communicative motives in domestic dogs

Helene Pettersson, Juliane Kaminski, Esther Herrmann, Michael Tomasello

Understanding of human communicative motives in domestic dogs

Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 133, Issues 3–4, September 2011, Pages 235–245

Abstract

Chimpanzees find it easier to locate food when a human prohibits them from going to a certain location than when she indicates that location helpfully. Human children, in contrast, use the cooperative gesture more readily. The question here was whether domestic dogs are more like chimpanzees, in this regard, or more like human children. In our first study we presented 40 dogs with two communicative contexts. In the cooperative context the experimenter informed the subject where food was hidden by pointing helpfully (with a cooperative tone of voice). In the competitive context the experimenter extended her arm towards the correct location in a prohibitive manner, palm of hand out (uttering a forbidding command in a prohibitive tone of voice). Dogs were successful in the cooperative condition (P = 0.005) but chose randomly in the competitive condition (P = 0.221). The second study independently varied the two characteristics of the communicative gesture (the gesture itself and the tone of voice). In addition to replicating dogs’ better performance with the cooperative gestures, this study suggests that tone of voice and context had more effect than type of gesture. In the context of food acquisition, domestic dogs, like human children, seem more prepared to use human gestures when they are given cooperatively.