Learning effects on interspecific communication between humans and domestic dogs

ELGIER, A; JAKOVCEVIC, A; BARRERA, G; MUSTACA, A; BENTOSELA, M

Melbourne EEUU

Congreso; 17 th International Conference on Comparative Cognition; 2010

Domestic dogs have shown to be successful at following human cues to solve the object choice task. The question is what are the mechanisms involved in these communicative abilities. Many authors proposed that these skills are a domestication product, independent from learning processes. This work present studies considering the effects of associative learning upon these skills. In the first two experiments we aim to evaluate the effect of extinction and reversal learning procedures on the use of the pointing gesture. Also two experiments where dogs performance in following physical or social cues are presented. The results showed that dogs stopped following the pointing cue in the extinction and that they learned to choose the not pointed container in the reversal learning. Furthermore, the presence of the owners improved the performance of the dogs during the reversal procedure, but delayed the extinction. On the other hand, the training of a colour cue reverses the preference for the social one, concluding that the dogs fundamentally follow those cues that allowed them to obtain reinforcers in their previous learning history. This suggests that instrumental learning plays an important role in interspecific communication between humans and dogs.