Some argue that dogs’ complex social skills have been selected for during their co-habitation with humans. Indeed, dogs may have to rely on sophisticated social abilities in order to get along in their relationships. However, instead of reporting a list of anecdotes researchers need to find well controlled methods to reveal the cognitive mechanisms that may operate in the dogs’ mind. We have not yet convincing evidence to say that dogs are able to read our minds but nevertheless they seem to be very skilful readers of our behaviour. In most cases this “trick” also does the job.

The attention of humans (the direction of looking – head orientation) has an important effect on the dogs’ behaviour. Dogs take human attention into account when they retrieve objects or respond to commands. In the latter, they can also figure out whether a command was intended to them or somebody else.

Dogs are also very good in displaying rituals and following simple rules. Not surprisingly they seem to get engaged easily a “hide & search” game, and will look for the object if actually nothing was hidden. Human behaviour often becomes a sample to which dogs match their behaviour. Thus sometimes a pointless short detour by the owner during the daily walk gets also included in the routine of the dog.

In particular situations dogs can take into account what the their owner know or does not know, however they observe some minute visible differences in the owners’ behaviour rather than being able to think about thoughts of the person. Our results show for example, that adult pet dogs, similarly to 3-year-old children, were able to complement information that was missing in the human. However whether dogs (and apes/children) used ‘mindreading’ or solved the task by some ‘insightful’ learning about observable behavioural cues of the human (behaviour-reading) is not clear. These results support the claim that dogs are able to provide humans with information that helps them in obtaining a goal; or, alternatively, dogs can rely on human behavioural cues indicating the lack of certain ‘knowledge’.

 

Further reading

Watson, J.S., Gergely, G., Topál, J., Gácsi, M., Sárközi, Zs., Csányi, V. 2001. Distinguishing logic from association in the solution of an invisible displacement task by children and dogs: Using negation of disjunction. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 115: 219-226. (pdf)

Kubinyi, E., Miklósi, Á., Topál, J., Csányi, V. 2003. Social mimetic behaviour and social anticipation in dogs: preliminary results. Animal Cognition, 6: 57-63. (pdf)

Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á., Varga, O., Topál, J., Csányi, V. 2004. Are readers of our face readers of our minds? Dogs (Canis familiaris) show situation-dependent recognition of human's attention. Animal Cognition, 7: 144-153. (pdf)

Virányi, Zs., Topál, J., Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á., Csányi, V. 2004. Dogs respond appropriately to cues of humans’ attentional focus. Behavioural Processes, 66: 161-172. (pdf)

Miklósi, Á., Topál, J., Csányi, V. 2004. Comparative social cognition: What can dogs teach us? Animal Behaviour, 67: 995-1004. (pdf)

Topál, J., Kubinyi, E., Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á. 2005. Obeying social rules: A comparative study on dogs and humans. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 3: 213-239. (pdf)

Virányi, Zs., Topál, J., Miklósi, Á., Csányi, V. 2006. A nonverbal test of knowledge attribution: a comparative study on dogs and children. Animal Cognition, 9: 13-26. (pdf)

Topál, J., Erdőhegyi, Á., Mányik R., Miklósi Á. 2006. Mindreading in a dog: an adaptation of a primate ‘mental attribution’ study. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy,6: 365-379. (pdf)

Erdőhegyi, Á., Topál, J., Virányi, Zs., Miklósi Á. 2007. Dog-logic: inferential reasoning in a two-way choice task and its restricted use. Animal Behaviour, 74: 725-737. (pdf)

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