Following human pointing: Where do dogs (Canis familiaris) look at to find food?

CARBALLO, FABRICIO; FREIDIN, E.; CASSANAVE, E.; BENTOSELA, M.

BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 p. 37 - 40

0376-6357

Domesticdogs (Canis familiaris) are notablyskillful in following cues from people (e.g., pointing gestures). However, notmuch is known about the processing of information available during such tasks.We here focus on one of the earliest of such processes, namely attention. Thegoal of the present work was to describe variations in dogs? attention towardsdiverse targets while they solve an object choice task with human pointing. Thedirection of subjects? gaze was measured in the period comprising one secondbefore and two seconds after the experimenter called the dog and simultaneouslyperformed a static distal pointing gesture towards the correct bowl. We did twoconsecutive training phases: acquisition and extinction.  Dogs spent more time watching the pointer thanthe pointing gesture itself and the correct than the incorrect bowl. Indeed,the time spent watching the correct bowl was the best predictor of correctchoices across phases. We discuss the relevance of these findings for theprocess of local enhancement.