Side matters: potential mechanisms underlying dogs' performance in a social eavesdropping paradigm
Section snippets
Experiment 1
In this experiment we assessed whether dogs use information about two unknown experimenters (the donors) after having witnessed interactions between those two donors and a third person (the beggar). They observed the unknown beggar begging from the two donors, with the ‘generous’ donor giving food to the beggar and the ‘selfish’ donor withholding the food. The prediction was that if dogs are able to use the indirect information about the food-sharing behaviour of the two donors, they should
Experiment 2
In experiment 2, we tested whether dogs use the information about the typical behaviour of the two donors (same as in experiment 1) after having witnessed several interactions between the donors and their owner. The important role of the owner might enhance the salience of the donors' roles so that the dogs potentially consider the experimenters' behaviour as more relevant.
General discussion
In our study we found no support for the hypothesis that dogs are able to assess humans' food-sharing tendencies after having witnessed interactions of a food-sharing experimenter versus food-withholding experimenter with a third person, the beggar. Instead, we found indications of an alternative explanation for the dogs' behaviour in this setting: It was influenced by the side, which was emphasized during the demonstrations.
In the experimental conditions (i.e. when not controlling for
Acknowledgments
We thank the dog owners, without whose support this work would not be possible. We also thank Kerstin Esau, Katrin Schumann, Marlen Hinz and Julia Steinbrueck for help with data collection and Anne Hertel for reliability coding. We thank Roger Mundry and Colleen Stephens for statistical advice. We are very grateful to Sarah Marshall-Pescini for valuable comments on the manuscript.
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