Do they know what we know?
A comparative study
of knowledge attribution in dogs and children
Z.V. Virányi, J. Topál, A. Miklósi and V. Csányi
Department of Ethology, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary
Several attempts have been made to design non-verbal methods suitable for examining mental state attribution in children and/or animals. The non-human investigations, however, have focused mainly on primates, such that the capabilities of dogs have not yet been examined. It is hypothesized that the common evolutionary history of dogs and humans has resulted in parallel adaptation mechanisms, and that dogs may have been selected for highly developed social-cognitive abilities. Hence, we attempted to assess the understanding of both dogs and pre-verbal children regarding the connection between seeing and knowing, in the same non-verbal situation.
In the experimental trials we conducted, subjects could earn a reward via the assistance of a ‘helper’ person. The reward was hidden out of the subject’s reach by a ‘hider’, who also hid a tool that was necessary for reaching the reward. The subjects witnessed these hiding events in all cases. There were four types of trials, with the ‘helper’ participating in the hiding of: (1) both the reward and the tool; (2) the reward only, (3) the tool only; or (4) neither of them.
Our results show that the behavior of both dogs and children was influenced by whether the ‘helper’ had participated in hiding the tool/reward or not. At the same time, the behavior of the dogs was found to be different from that of the human infants. Both mentalistic and non-mentalistic interpretations will be considered.
Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2002 , 4th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 27-30 August 2002, Amsterdam, The Netherlands