Study reveals dogs are sensitive to their humans’ choice

The researchers first tested a subset of dogs on their spontaneous preference for either a dog toy or a bracelet.

Washington: Inspired by work on infants, researchers at the Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE ) investigated whether dogs’ behaviours are guided by human displays of preference or by the animals’ own choices. They found that dogs’ looking times, but not fetching behaviour, were influenced by the owner’s expression of preference.

Although the studies did not demonstrate that dogs override their own preferences for an object, the results suggested that the owners’ expressed preference was perceived by the dogs and guided their perceptual focus.

Studies on animal cognition deepen our understanding of the human mind’s evolution and help inform policymakers in the production of legislation around animal keeping. Whether dogs have any idea that their humans have thoughts and emotions of their own, is one of the hot topics in dog research. The answer could have interesting implications, but it has been challenging to find a decisive way to test it so far.

“There is no shortage of attempts to unveil the putative mind-reading abilities of dogs,” says Dr Adam Miklosi, head of the Department of Ethology at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, “but no single study has been convincing enough on its own, so over the years we have broken down the big question into smaller, more tangible goals.”

One of these goals has been to investigate how dogs respond to expressions signalling the preferences of humans. “We knew that dogs respond to humans signalling their preference, but in previous studies, the dogs’ own priorities were not accounted for. In particular, we did not know how conflicting preferences between the dogs and the owner influence the behaviour of dogs,” says Eniko Kubinyi, leading author of the study.

The researchers first tested a subset of dogs on their spontaneous preference for either a dog toy or a bracelet. Fifty-one dogs were assigned to one of two experimental groups: a matching/congruent condition where owners displayed happy expressions towards the toy and made disgusted faces towards the bracelet, and a non-matching/incongruent condition, where owners showed happiness toward the bracelet and disgust toward the toy.

After the emotion display, the toy and the bracelet were placed out of reach and the researchers now measured how much time the dogs looked at each object. “In this case”, says Ivaylo Iotchev, a postdoc at Eotvos Lorand University, and co-author, “the dogs looked at the favoured toy when their owner had previously responded to it with a happy face. In the other group, they looked the same amount of time at the bracelet and the toy.”