Why do dogs look back at the human in an impossible task? Looking back behaviour may be over-interpreted.
Free-ranging dogs
Impossible task
Looking back
Persistence
Journal
Animal cognition
ISSN: 1435-9456
Titre abrégé: Anim Cogn
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 9814573
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
May 2020
May 2020
Historique:
received:
29
05
2019
accepted:
04
01
2020
revised:
08
12
2019
pubmed:
25
2
2020
medline:
2
7
2020
entrez:
25
2
2020
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
The impossible task paradigm has been extensively used to study the looking back behaviour in dogs. This behaviour is commonly considered a social problem-solving strategy: dogs facing an unsolvable task, soon give up and look back at the experimenter to ask for help. We aimed to test if the looking back in an impossible task does indeed represent a social problem-solving strategy. We used a modified version of the classic impossible task, in which the subjects simultaneously faced three possible and one impossible trials. Additionally, subjects were tested in four different conditions: social condition (with an unknown experimenter); asocial condition (subject alone); 'dummy' human condition (with a 'dummy' human); object condition (with a big sheet of cardboard). Finally, we compared two populations of dogs differing in their experience of receiving help from humans: 20 pet dogs tested in their houses and 31 free-ranging dogs tested in Morocco. We found that the pet dogs and free-ranging dogs had similar persistence in interacting with the impossible task in all conditions. Moreover, subjects looked back with similar latencies at the human, at the dummy human and at the object. Overall, pet dogs looked back longer at the human than free-ranging dogs. This could be interpreted as pet dogs being more attracted to humans and/or having a stronger association between humans and food than free-ranging dogs. Concluding, the looking back in an impossible task does not represent a problem-solving strategy. This behaviour seems rather linked to the subject's persistence, to the salience of the stimuli presented, and potentially to the past reinforcement history.
Identifiants
pubmed: 32090291
doi: 10.1007/s10071-020-01345-8
pii: 10.1007/s10071-020-01345-8
pmc: PMC7181563
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
427-441Subventions
Organisme : Austrian Academy of Sciences
ID : DOC fellowship
Organisme : Austrian Science Fund
ID : W1262-B29
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