Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action

Britta Schünemann,Judith Keller,Juliane Bräuer,Hannes Rakoczy,Tanya Behne

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-94374-3

Abstract

When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. But it is unclear from these everyday observations whether the dogs simply respond to the action outcomes or whether they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions. Are dogs able to distinguish intentional human actions from unintentional ones, even when the action outcomes are the same? We tested dogs’ ability to discriminate these action categories by adapting the so-called “Unwilling vs. Unable” paradigm. This paradigm compares subjects’ reactions to intentional and unintentional human behaviour. All dogs received three conditions: In the unwilling-condition, an experimenter intentionally withheld a reward from them. In the two unable-conditions, she unintentionally withheld the reward, either because she was clumsy or because she was physically prevented from giving the reward to the dog. Dogs clearly distinguished in their spontaneous behaviour between unwilling- and unable-conditions. This indicates that dogs indeed distinguish intentional actions from unintentional behaviour. We critically discuss our findings with regard to dogs’ understanding of human intentional action.

Highlights

When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action
Theory of Mind has long been regarded as a uniquely human ability. While this may be true for our full-fledged adult Theory of Mind that includes the ascription of complex subjective states, accumulating evidence suggests that certain basic capacities to ascribe simple mental states to other agents are present in some non-human species, such as apes and birds
Dogs experience how humans direct their actions to certain goals, and encounter intentional and unintentional actions, for instance, when humans lie on the grass intentionally versus when they trip

Summary

Introduction

When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. To explore dogs’ ability to distinguish intentional from unintentional actions, the current study adapted the “Unwilling vs Unable” paradigm to make it suitable for dogs: The dogs (N = 51) were separated from the experimenter by a transparent partition wall (Fig. 1). In the unwilling-condition, the experimenter suddenly withdrew the reward from the dog with an intentional movement and placed it in front of herself.

Results

Conclusion