Hampshire College

Dogs, Dogs, and More Dogs!: A Study on Cognitive Abilities of Dogs

Ryleigh Repass
Development of Non-Verbal Communication - Psych 362
Carrie Palmquist
4/4/16

Introduction:
The theory that dogs can follow human gestures is not a novel one - anyone with a dog
has witnessed this on a personal level. It has been suggested that dogs coevolved with humans up
to 100,000 years ago and were naturally selected for their ability to follow gestures (Paxton,
2000; Vila et al., 1997). It is well known that dogs are able to follow a humans point (Hare &
Tomasello, 1999). However, there are many factors that can affect how well dogs are able to
interpret this gesture (pointing, bowing, nodding, head turning, and glancing gestures). Soproni,
Miklosi, Topal, & Csanyi (2002) addressed what which aspects of gestures dogs pay attention to

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 10:41 AM

Comment: These affect dogs ability to
interpret pointing? Or these are other
gestures they can also interpret?
Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 10:46 AM

by conducting a series of experiments. They tested gestures with reversed direction of

Deleted: A study that addresses what aspect

of the gesture dogs pay attention to is by

movement, cross-pointing, and different arm extensions. They concluded that the body contour

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 10:46 AM

Deleted: in which they conducted

of the raised arm is most likely what the dogs are paying attention to. In situations where the
body contour is not accessible, the dogs are able to use body positions of the signaler.
The fact that dogs have the ability to interpret different types of gestures suggests that
they understand the communicative intent of humans. In the same study by Soproni et al. (2002),
they argue for the idea that dogs are able to rely on pointing as a referential gesture. In other
words, pointing by humans is not only intentional and conveying of a message but is also
correctly interpreted by the dog.
In almost all experiments on dogs comprehension of pointing, the human is facing
towards the dog and their face is visible. Even in situations where experimenters do not look
towards the correct direction, minute facial cues are possibly present. A prime example of
unintentional cueing in an experiment is with Clever Hans - the horse that knew math! As it
turned out, he simply stomped his foot until a cue was inadvertently given by the experimenter.
This is an incredible example of following cues but not a very good example of non-human

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:24 AM

Comment: But if body contours are so
important, are they really understanding
the underlying cognitive component of the
communication?

animals performing mathematics. Thus, it is important to consider the fact that dogs might be
picking up on very small, unintentional gestures by the experimenter. Therefore, whether or not
dogs are able to follow gestures when the face is not visible (i.e. covered or facing away) is not
known and could provide a non-biased understanding to what dogs are paying attention to.
Though there are many experiments that concentrate on the importance of the face in an
infants and chimpanzees ability to follow a gesture, there is little known for dogs (Johnson,
Slaughter & Carey, 1998, Povinelli, Bering, & Giambrone 2003). Povinelli et al. (2003)
performed a series of experiments on chimpanzees ability to gesture in correct situations. Of
interest to this study, is the paradigm where the experimenters covered their face or eyes with a
blindfold, hand or bucket and the paradigm where the experimenters were facing away from the
chimpanzees. What they found is that chimpanzees performed well above chance on gesturing to
the correct individual when one of the experimenters was facing away but when one
experimenters faces were covered, chimpanzees continued to gesture towards the incorrect
individual (i.e. the one that could not see). Here, it is suggested that chimpanzees use the frontal
orientation of the experimenter and not the eyes/face to determine if the experimenter will follow
their gesture. This is important because the face has seemingly little to no importance for these
chimpanzees which suggests that they have a low level understanding of what is important for
communication to occur when gesturing.
So where do dogs fit into this level of comprehension? The following experiment is
designed to address this question. Similar to the chimpanzee study, the experimenter will either
face the dog with their head covered or face away from the dog while pointing. The two parts of
this study are to determine the extent to which dogs can comprehend a point: is the front of the
human important as in the case of the chimpanzees or not at all? If the dog is not able to follow

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:39 AM

Comment: So is this more about
understanding the importance of gaze, or
eliminating small inadvertent cues as you
mentioned above?

the points when the experimenter is not facing the dog, then one could conclude that the front of
the human as well as the face is a significant factor in pointing comprehension. However, if the

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:39 AM

Comment: In a good way, or a bad way?

dog can follow the point even when the human is facing away, one can presume that the contour
of the body is of significance. In order to eliminate the possibility that the face is inadvertently
providing gestures for dogs, one would need to cover their face during experimentation. In the
case where the experimenter is facing the dog with their face covered while pointing, one would
still expect the dog to follow the point if the contour of the body is a defining factor.
Method:
Participants:

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:40 AM

Comment: But still not clear what this
tells us about the understanding dogs
have. How would each of these outcomes
affect how we interpret dogs knowledge of
human communication?

Dogs of varying age, breed and gender.

All experiments are conducted in a laboratory room. Owners are present. One
experimenter performs all pointing tasks across experiments. Two red cups upside down were
placed 1 meter apart. Towels were placed underneath the cups to avoid sound when placing the
treats. The experimenter stood in the middle of the two cups 0.5 meters behind. The dog was 2

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:40 AM

Comment: Should be all past tense

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:41 AM

Deleted: are

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:41 AM

Deleted: a

meters from the experimenter being restrained by the owner.

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:41 AM

Deleted: ands

Training:

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:41 AM

Deleted: i

Experimenter tried to get the dogs attention by saying his/her name and making eye
contact. The experimenter showed the dog the treat then placed it underneath one of the cups.
The experimenter stepped back and pointed to the cup. The owner released the dog and allowed
him to choose. If the correct one was chosen, the dog was given the treat and praised by the
owner. If the dog chose the incorrect one or none of them, the experimenter retrieved the treat
and showed it to the dog but does not allow him to eat it. This was repeated as many times as
necessary to train the dog to be aware that a treat was under the cups.

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:47 AM

Comment: How many times, on average,
did you need to do this? Was there a lot of
variation across dogs?

Testing:
Phase 1: Dog was removed from the room by the owner while the experimenter placed a

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:47 AM

Deleted: s

treat under both of the cups. The experimenter then faced away from the cups. The owner
brought the dog back into the room and had him face towards the experimenter. The
experimenter got the dogs attention by saying his name. A bystander provided cues to the
experimenter so they knew when the dog was paying attention. At this point, the experimenter
pointed to one of the cups (note: both cups contained treats to avoid bias towards cup that
smelled of treats). The owner then released the dog. The dogs reaction was recorded. There

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:47 AM

Deleted: s

were two possible outcomes: correct choice - dog chose the right cup and incorrect choice - dog
chose the opposite cup or looked to the experimenters hand instead of the cup or did nothing. If
the dog chose the correct cup, they were rewarded with a treat and praise from the owner. If they
chose the wrong cup, nothing happened. Dogs were recorded as choosing the correct cup if they
immediately walked towards the correct one and sniffed or touched the cup. Actions after the
initial choice were not recorded. This was repeated 5 times.
Phase 2: Same as phase 1 except the experimenter covered their face with a reusable
cloth bag instead of facing away. This was repeated 5 times.
Results:
Dogs one through three were initially studied before adjustments were made. All but one
dog, Sebastian the pug, chose correctly on both tasks. Small adjustments were made to the
training phase (only completed as many as necessary as opposed to completing 5) and option
other as a choice for the dog was combined with incorrect. Dogs four and five were then
observed. Dog 4, Maisy, chose incorrectly on one of the five tasks for phase 1 and three of the

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:48 AM

Comment: They didnt get the treat that
was in that cup?

five tasks for phase 2. Dog 5 chose correctly every time. Exact choices per dog can be seen in
Figure 1a-e.
Chi square test was performed for dogs 1 and 4 between phases and no significant
difference was observed (p=1, p=.19 respectively) - all dogs performed similarly or exactly the
same between phase one and phase two. Note: only dogs one and four chose incorrectly.
Discussion:
As hypothesized, most dogs were able to follow the point to the correct cup under both
conditions. Thus, it appears that minute facial gestures nor facing forward actually affect the
dogs ability to follow these gestures. This study supports the hypothesis that dogs pay attention
to the contour of the body in order to follow a gesture. If looking at just this study, it is easy to
interpret the results as dogs having a low level understanding for pointing. It appears that dogs,
because they do not need the face or even the front of the humans body to follow a point, are
simply learning the behavior of arm equals food. More so, because the dogs look to the location
of the head, i.e. where the face would be, and hold that gaze before following the point, it could
be interpreted that dogs do not even understand the significance of seeing. However, combining
this data with that of other studies proves otherwise.
Dogs are able to generalize novel situations to interpret a cue. In this study, the novel
situation is pointing while facing away from the dog or pointing with a bag covering the face.
Normally, pointing is combined with mutual gaze following and therefore, lack of this gaze is
quite new for these dogs. Povinelli, Reaux, Bierschwale, Allain, and Simon (1997) suggest that

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:51 AM

Deleted: &

the ability to interpret novel cues is supportive evidence that dogs comprehend pointing as
referential in nature. Based on this, dogs are able to understand referentiality. However, Lakatos,
Soproni, Doka, and Miklosi (2009) do not entirely agree. They say that we can conclude that

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:51 AM

Comment: Is this similar to flexible
responding as discussed by Seyfarth and
Cheney?

dogs can generalize but it is difficult to determine level of comprehension in terms of

communicative intent. This is true - because we are unable to understand precisely what the dog
is thinking, it is difficult to know what level of comprehension is occurring.
Although, this inability to read the minds of dogs does not stop scientists from trying
figure out what dogs do or do not comprehend. Soproni et al. (2002) are able to break down
pointing in order to analyze the key components necessary for a dog to understand the
communicative action. Through the testing, they found that dogs are able to generalize the
gestures to be referential in nature. They performed above chance on novel pointing tasks
without the need for training suggesting that they understand key components of gesturing as
communicative.

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:52 AM

Scientists Udell, Giglio, and Wynne (2008) suggest that dogs are able to follow cues so

Comment: How does this help them

make the case that dogs understand
pointing? Elaborate a bit more here.

well because they have been raised in such close contact to humans. They hypothesize that the

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:52 AM

Deleted: &

ability to follow cues is reliant on humans performing these cues. They tested this hypothesis by

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:52 AM

Deleted: the reason

object choice task with both human cues and non human cues (i.e. mechanical arm, stuffed

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:52 AM

Deleted: is

animal look). They found that dogs performed significantly worse on the non human cues than
the human cues, supporting their hypothesis. So what does this say about the dogs ability to
comprehend gestures? This study shows support for the theory that dogs are able to comprehend
that gesturing is a communicative act. Had the dogs performed just as well in the nonhuman
gesturing trials as the human ones, then one could presume that dogs do not understand that
gesturing by humans is a form of communication. However, dogs do perform significantly better
with humans than without.
Another important aspect to address in regards to dogs ability to follow gestures is
rearing conditions. Though many scientists mention the importance of dogs coevolving with

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:53 AM

Comment: And how does this help us to
interpret the results of this study?
Remember, in the discussion you want to
try to include research that bolsters some
interpretation of your own results.

humans (Soproni, Miklosi, Topal, & Csanyi, 2001; Soproni et al., 2002; Udell et al., 2008), few
scientists address the importance of how close to humans the individual dog was raised. The
differences in ability to understand gestures has been documented between captive reared and
wild populations of apes (Soproni et al., 2001) where enculturated apes do not need any training
to follow communicative gestures. One of the few studies that addresses the possible differences
in dogs is by Udell, Dorey and Wynne (2010) in which they perform human-guided objectchoice tasks on stray dogs living in a shelter. Similar to studies on apes, stray dogs initially
performed poorly on object-choice tasks but showed a learning effect across trials.
This learning effect across trials is also documented in hand-reared wolves (Viranyi et al.,
2008). Dogs, having evolved from wolves, are often times considered the domesticated wolf.
Therefore, people often attribute many behaviors of dogs as predisposed to the species. However,
rearing conditions have an effect on their ability to comprehend cues, which suggests dogs do not
have this predisposition. Throughout species, humans included, environmental and
developmental factors show a large effect on comprehension of referentiality. The fact that
comprehension of pointing appears to be a learned and developed ability further supports the
theory that understanding the pointing gesture requires a high-level of cognition. Thus, keeping
all the research in mind, one can conclude that dogs have a high-level cognitive ability.
However, further research needs to be completed as to the importance of the environment on the
ability to learn. An interesting theory that should be tested is that shelter dogs or stray dogs are
genetically different from pet dogs and therefore develop on a cognitively different level. If this
theory is true, then comparing the results of shelter dogs to that of pet dogs in terms of
environment being the only differing factor might not be entirely accurate.

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:54 AM

Comment: And what about the McKinley
study we discussed in class that compared
different dog breeds that had been trained
or not?

Future studies might further test the theory that dogs follow the contour of the body in a
gesture by gesturing without a visible contour. However, the preliminary findings of this study
suggest that the contour is significant which is supportive of original hypotheses.

References:
Johnson, S., Slaughter, V., & Carey, S. (1998). Whose gaze will infants follow? The
elicitation of gaze-following in 12-month-olds. Developmental Science, 1(2),
233-238.
Lakatos, G., Soproni, K., Dka, A., & Miklsi, . (2009). A comparative approach to
dogs(Canis
familiaris) and human infants comprehension of various forms of pointing gestures.
Animal
cognition, 12(4), 621-631.
Paxton, D. W. (2000). A case for a naturalistic perspective. Anthrozos,13(1), 5-8.
Povinelli, D. J., Reaux, J. E., Bierschwale, D. T., Allain, A. D., & Simon, B. B. (1997).
Exploitation of
pointing as a referential gesture in young children, but not adolescent chimpanzees.
Cognitive
Development, 12(4), 423-461.
Povinelli, D. J., Bering, J. M., & Giambrone, S. (2003). Chimpanzee pointing: Another error of
the
argument by analogy. Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet, 35-68.
Soproni, K., Miklsi, ., Topl, J., & Csnyi, V. (2001). Comprehension of human
communicative
signs in pet dogs (Canis familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 115(2), 122.
Soproni, K., Miklsi, A., Topl, J., & Csnyi, V. (2002). Dogs'(Canis familaris)
responsiveness to human pointing gestures. Journal of comparative psychology,
116(1), 27.
Udell, M. A., Giglio, R. F., & Wynne, C. D. (2008). Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) use human

Carolyn Palmquist 5/12/16 11:56 AM

Comment: What about limitations of the
current study?
Also, I think there should have been more
discussion here about how contour
sensitivity suggests that dogs understand
the communicators intentions. I thought
the research you included in the
discussion here was interesting, but again
it was difficult to see how it helped the
reader to better interpret your own results.
More connections here would be key.

gestures but not nonhuman tokens to find hidden food.Journal of Comparative

Psychology,
122(1), 84.
Udell, M. A., Dorey, N. R., & Wynne, C. D. (2010). The performance of stray dogs (Canis
familiaris)
living in a shelter on human-guided object-choice tasks. Animal Behaviour, 79(3), 717725.
Vil, C., Savolainen, P., Maldonado, J. E., Amorim, I. R., Rice, J. E., Honeycutt, R. L., ... &
Wayne,
R. K. (1997). Multiple and ancient origins of the domestic dog. Science, 276(5319),
1687-1689.
Virnyi, Z., Gcsi, M., Kubinyi, E., Topl, J., Belnyi, B., Ujfalussy, D., & Miklsi, . (2008).
Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (Canis lupus)
and
dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal cognition, 11(3), 373-387.

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Figure 1 a
Dog 1

Sebastian, pug

Trial 1

Facing away
Correct

Incorrect

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Trial 2

Bag over head

Correct

Test 1

Incorrect

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Figure 1 b

11

Dog 2

Oman - Border
Collie - 1.5
years

Trial 1

Facing Away
Correct

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Trial 2

Bag Over Head

Correct

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Figure 1 c

Incorrect

Incorrect

12

Dog 3

Josie - 7 years
old - golden
retriever

Trial 1

Facing away
Correct

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Trial 2

Bag over head

Correct

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Incorrect

Incorrect

Figure 1 d

Dog 4

Maisy

Nova Scotia
Duck Tolling
Retriever

13
Trial 1

Facing Away
Correct

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Trial 1

Facing Away
Correct

Test 1

Incorrect

Incorrect

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Figure 1 e

Dog 5

Mutt (shepard,
boxer mix) - 5
years old

Trial 1

Facing Away

14
Correct
Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Trial 2

Bag Over Head

Correct

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Incorrect

Incorrect