Dogs follow human misleading suggestions more often when the informant has a false belief

Abstract

We investigated whether dogs ( Canis familiaris ) distinguish between human true (TB) and false beliefs (FB). In three experiments with a pre-registered change of location task, dogs ( n = 260) could retrieve food from one of two opaque buckets after witnessing a misleading suggestion by a human informant (the ‘communicator’) who held either a TB or a FB about the location of food. Dogs in both the TB and FB group witnessed the initial hiding of food, its subsequent displacement by a second experimenter, and finally, the misleading suggestion to the empty bucket by the communicator. On average, dogs chose the suggested container significantly more often in the FB group than in the TB group and hence were sensitive to the experimental manipulation. Terriers were the only group of breeds that behaved like human infants and apes tested in previous studies with a similar paradigm, by following the communicator's suggestion more often in the TB than in the FB group. We discuss the results in terms of processing of goals and beliefs. Overall, we provide evidence that pet dogs distinguish between TB and FB scenarios, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying sensitivity to others' beliefs have not evolved uniquely in the primate lineage.

Unwilling or Unable? Using 3D tracking to evaluate dogs’ reactions to differing human intentions

“…In the context of a growing literature on dogs’ comprehension of referential communicative signals [17,21,34,44,47,48], perspective taking abilities [25,27], goal [28,33] and (false) belief attribution [26] it appears also possible that the current findings reflect a more general and flexible cognitive mechanism allowing dogs to predict human behaviour based on inferred current intentions. A prediction that one could derive from a genuine intention-reading ability is that dogs might expect a human with a certain intention to behave consistently across different contexts.…”

False belief understanding in children and dogs in a nonverbal ambiguous displacement and communication setting

“…In addition, dogs are accustomed to co-habit with their human families, which may add to their social cognitive abilities, especially when interacting with humans. Indeed, in previous studies, pet dogs showed signs that they were considering the perspective of human communicators about the location of hidden food (Catala et al, 2017;Lonardo et al, 2021;Maginnity & Grace, 2014). The results of Lonardo et al (2021) even suggest that pet dogs are sensitive to the false or true beliefs of the communicators (see below).…”

“…Indeed, in previous studies, pet dogs showed signs that they were considering the perspective of human communicators about the location of hidden food (Catala et al, 2017;Lonardo et al, 2021;Maginnity & Grace, 2014). The results of Lonardo et al (2021) even suggest that pet dogs are sensitive to the false or true beliefs of the communicators (see below). However overall, there is a relative lack of findings definitively confirming, but also dismissing, the presence of false-belief understanding in non-human animals (but see Buttelmann et al 2017, Kano et al 2019, Krupenye et al 2016, Krupenye & Call, 2019, and Lurz et al 2022 for notable examples of non-human belief-understanding research).…”

“…Theory of Mind is a key component of social cognition (Bradford et al, 2015;Santiesteban et al, 2012) and has therefore been a target of extensive research in other social animals, such as non-human primates (Heyes, 1998;Horschler et al, 2020;Kano et al, 2020;Krupenye et al, 2016;Lewis & Krupenye, 2021;Premack & Woodruff 1978), dogs (Catala et al, 2017;Hare & Tomasello, 2005;Kaminski et al, 2009;Lonardo et al, 2021;Maginnity & Grace, 2014), and dolphins (Tschudin 2006, for a critical discussion see Hill et al, 2018). Non-human primates, who share a larger part of the human phylogeny than other mammals, are to some extent able to use information on what others do and do not know to inform their own behavior (Hare, Call & Tomasello, 2001Hare et al, 2000;Krupenye et al, 2016).…”

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Finding ways to investigate false belief understanding nonverbally is not just important for research in preverbal children, but it is the only way to assess theory of mind-like (ToM) abilities in nonhuman animals. In this preregistered study, we adapted the design from a previous study on dogs (Lonardo et al, 2021) to investigate false belief understanding in children and compare them to dogs. Thirty-two preschool-children (aged 5-6 years) saw the displacement of a reward and also obtained nonverbal cueing information from an adult communicator holding either a true or false belief.

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