Condicionamiento

Anim Cogn DOI 10.1007/s10071-012-0534-6

ORIGINAL PAPER

Pointing following in dogs: are simple or complex cognitive mechanisms involved?
Angel M. Elgier • Adriana Jakovcevic Alba E. Mustaca • Mariana Bentosela
•

Received: 26 April 2012 / Revised: 2 July 2012 / Accepted: 3 July 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012

Abstract Domestic dogs have proved to be extremely successful in finding hiddenfood following a series of human social cues such as pointing (an extended hand and index finger indicating the location of the reward), or body position, among many other variants. There is controversy about the mechanisms responsible for these communicative skills in dogs. On the one hand, a hypothesis states that dogs have complex cognitive processes such as a theory of mind, which allow them toattribute intent to the human pointing gesture. A second, more parsimonious, hypothesis proposes that these skills depend on associative learning processes. The purpose of this paper is to provide data that may shed some light on the discussion by looking into two learning processes by using an object choice task: the effect of interference between stimuli on the preference for human social cuesand the effect of generalization of the response to novel human social stimuli. The first study revealed that previous training using a physical cue (container location) may hamper the learning of a novel human social cue (distal cross-pointing). The results of the second study indicated stimulus generalization. Dogs learnt a novel cue (distal cross-pointing) faster due to previous experience with asimilar cue (proximal pointing), as compared to dogs confronted by a less similar cue (body

position) or dogs with no previous experience. In sum, these findings support the hypothesis about the important role of associative learning in interspecific communication mechanisms of domestic dogs. Keywords Interspecific communication Á Interference Á Generalization Á Learning Á Domestic dogsIntroduction At times, successful communication among different species is observed. This is the case of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and humans (e.g. Hare and Tomasello 2005). Dogs have learnt to ask humans for help on numerous occasions to reach different relevant resources like food or toys. Thus, humans become social tools (Cooper et al. 2003; Leavens et al. 2005). For instance, in an objectchoice task, where food is hidden in one of two possible containers, dogs manage to find it by following a series of human-given cues, such as pointing with an arm and an extended finger or the person’s body position (e.g. Soproni et al. 2001). These skills seem to be basically expressed in cooperative situations where the human provides information so that the dog may find the relevant resource, butnot in competitive situations (Pettersson et al. 2011). This remarkable dog performance was identified since early stages of development and after the first training trials, which led several authors to assert that these capacities were the outcome of a domestication process and were not hinged upon experiences received during ontogeny (e.g. ´ Miklosi 2009; Hare et al. 2010). On the other hand, thereis some controversy about the mechanisms involved in these skills. Several authors have postulated that such skills would be related to complex

Angel M. Elgier, Adriana Jakovcevic contributed equally to this work. A. M. Elgier Á A. Jakovcevic Á A. E. Mustaca Á M. Bentosela (&) ´ ´ Grupo ICOC (Investigacion del Comportamiento en Canidos), ´ Laboratorio de Psicologıa Experimental y Aplicada(PSEA), ´ Instituto de Investigaciones Medicas (IDIM) CONICET-UBA, Combatientes de Malvinas 3150 (1426), Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: marianabentosela@gmail.com

123

Anim Cogn

cognitive processes like detecting attentional states and understanding humans’ communicative intent. Dog–human communication would be referential in its nature as it involves triadic interactions with references to...