Silly Dog: Human Influence Alters Dog's Inferential Reasoning
They say that a dog is "man's best friend". Dogs look up to their human companions, often so much that it seems like they will often do silly or illogical things just to please us. I have often witnessed dogs acting like total goofs around people. This behavior can lead people to question a dog's intelligence.
A study in Budapest was conducted with 42 dogs to see how much of influence humans are when dogs make decisions. In one experiment, a toy ball was placed underneath a small plastic flower pot under another larger plastic flower pot. The researchers also used an identical set of pots with nothing underneath them. Both pots were lifted in front of the dog, who was anxious to retrieve the ball. A researcher would do things such as look at the empty pots, or move them then look at the dog. Because the human researcher showed interest in the empty pots, the dogs usually chose that set. In a second experiment, researchers used pots which could be lifted remotely by a string so that any human behavior would not be a factor. After the dogs were shown the empty set of pots, they immediately went to the other set looking for the ball, by process of elimination.
In the first experiment, the dogs were copying the behavior of the human researcher. In the second experiment, the dogs were using inferential reasoning. They were concluding where the location of the ball was by knowing where it wasn't. This study has pointed out two things about dog behavior. One is that dogs do use inferential reasoning, and the other is that dogs don't exhibit this reasoning when exposed to cues from humans. The study shows a similarity between the influence of humans on dogs and the influence of adults on children. The dogs made mistakes in locating the ball due to human signals, just as children often make poor life decisions based on signals they received from adults.
Source: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/10/09/doglogic_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20071009124530
Posted by: Gina Sciartilli (4)
posted by PWH @ 3:37 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Wow, that's a cool little study. Out of curiosity, have you heard of or were there any other experiments referenced in the text that were like this one? Also, how often did the dogs do what the humans lead them to do? (and, as a side note, if you embedded the URL you've got at the end, the post would probably look a little cleaner. It's easy, just instead of pasting it to the body of the paragraph, you can highlight some text, then hit the "embed URL" key and paste the link in the box that pops up.)
Posted by Brad Garvey
It was neat to learn about dogs using inferential reasoning, although I would like to know more about how the dogs behaved when the owner lifted a pot that did not have a ball under it. Were the dogs not interested in checking the other pots just because the owner was present and showing interest in an pot the dog knew was empty? I understand that the owner could influence his dog's choice of pot initially, but would the dog use reasoning after this point to determine the location of the ball without further interaction from its owner?
A. Morkeski (4)
Dogs are pack animals. I wonder if this plays a role in this experiment. Dogs look to a leader for clues on how to act. It would be interesting to see how the researchers interacted with the dogs involved. If the researchers did the same experiment again but with different body language or tone of voice would the result be the same?
Kelly Pollard (4)
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