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Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action
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...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8410798/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34471153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94374-3 |
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author | Schünemann, Britta Keller, Judith Rakoczy, Hannes Behne, Tanya Bräuer, Juliane |
author_facet | Schünemann, Britta Keller, Judith Rakoczy, Hannes Behne, Tanya Bräuer, Juliane |
author_sort | Schünemann, Britta |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8410798 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84107982021-09-03 Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action Schünemann, Britta Keller, Judith Rakoczy, Hannes Behne, Tanya Bräuer, Juliane Sci Rep Article 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. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC8410798/ /pubmed/34471153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94374-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Schünemann, Britta Keller, Judith Rakoczy, Hannes Behne, Tanya Bräuer, Juliane Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
title | Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
title_full | Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
title_fullStr | Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
title_full_unstemmed | Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
title_short | Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
title_sort | dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8410798/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34471153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94374-3 |
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