HOW DOGS LEARN FROM HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Can dogs read our minds? How do they learn to ask for food or do they behave badly especially when we don't look at them? According to Monique Udell and his team, the University of Florida, the way in which dogs come to respond to the level of people's attention tells us something about how dogs think and learn about human behavior.
His research, published in the journal Learning & Behaviour, suggests that everything is due to a combination of specific signals, context and experience. Recent work has identified a remarkable range of social behaviors similar to humans in domestic dogs, including its ability to respond to human body language, verbal orders, and the States of attention.
The question is, How do they do it? Do dogs infer in human beings mental states by observing their appearance and behavior in different circumstances and then act accordingly? Or learn from experience, in response to environmental signals, The presence or absence of certain stimuli, and even the signs of human behavior? Udell's work and his companions "sheds some light on these issues".
They carried out two experiments comparing the performance of domestic dogs, pastoral dogs and wolves, giving them the opportunity to ask for food, either a close person or a person who cannot see the animal. They wanted to know if the animal's own environment (a herd or a House), or own species (dog or Wolf), had an impact on animal performance.
It showed for the first time that the wolves, like domestic dogs, they are able to claim food approaching the attentive human. This shows that both species – domestic and non-domestic – they have the ability to behave according to the State of attention of a human being. It also, both the wolves and the dogs were able to quickly improve your performance with practice. The authors also found that dogs were not sensitive to all the Visual signs of attention of a human being in the same way.
In particular, Domestic atmosphere instead of those dedicated to shepherd were more sensitive to predictable stimuli in attentive human beings. Dogs with less regular exposure to humans were more incorrectly in to ask food.
According to the researchers, ยซThese results suggest that the skill of dogs to follow human actions is due to the will to accept human beings as social colleagues, combined with an ability to keep the limbs and the actions of human beings to receive confirmation. Like this, the type of attention signals, the context in which the order is, And previous experience are important ยป.
EUROPA PRESS