A Fun Experiment With Treats, Dogs Are able to See Your true intentions
Your dog is watching you and knows that. They are always attentive, always devoted to us.
Dogs Can Detect Your True Intentions
However, despite their admiring (and food-hungry) eyes, how well can they discern the actions we take? Are they able to discern the significance and purpose of our choices?
Perhaps they could at least, to a certain degree, according to recent research that found dogs were able to discern between unintentional and intentional actions on the part of human beings.
“The dogs we studied clearly showed different behaviors based what actions the human participant were deliberate or accidental,” the researcher in developmental psychology Britta Schunemann at the University of Gottingen in Germany.
“This suggests that dogs may indeed be able to identify humans’ intention-in-action.”
In studies using over 50 dog breeds researchers devised tests to see if dogs can distinguish between human intentions and the absence of intent.
Utilizing an established method known as the a researcher would sit on one side of a clear separation, with dogs in the opposite.
In the beginning of the study there was a small gap between the partition was used by researchers to give the dog treats and this was done several times.
Following this, the actual test began: Food rewards were shown to dogs, but later not offered to them in any of three ways.
In the case of the unwilling-condition the experimenter abruptly withdrew the treat from the dog, triggering an intentional gesture,” the researchers describe in their study in their study, with the condition of unwilling signifies that the experimenter deliberately withheld the reward from the dog.
Two other methods reflected instances in which the researcher expressed intentions for feeding the pet, but could not do so.
“In the unclumsy, insecure condition the subject tried to give the reward however, the reward “accidentally” disappeared from her hand before she could get it through the gap” the researchers write.
“Similarly when she was blocked situation, she tried to give the reward but was unable to get through the gap since the reward was blocked.”
In each case the dog did not succeed to earn the food reward, however the goal was to determine whether the dog behaved differently according to the cause of the failure. Can the dog detect the intention to eat and differentiate it from a lack of intention?
“If dogs truly are able to attribute intention-in-action to human it is reasonable to expect them to have distinct reactions in the willing situation compared to the two conditions that are unable to do so, the senior research scientist, and animal cognition researcher Juliane Brauer from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
In the end, exactly this is what we saw.”
Before the experiment was initiated the dogs were familiar with the lab setup and were shown to be able to actually stroll around the glass in order to get to the lab researcher.
The study’s researchers realized that dogs may eventually decide that it was easier to grab the food if they strolled around the separation to find where the source of food is.
The team also predicted that dogs that were intentionally denied treats will take longer to wait before they attempted this, because they would not be as likely to be awarded the reward.
Or, dogs that experienced the unfortunate circumstance of experiencing a blockage or clumsy feeding attempts might be more apt to engage with the researcher, since they have no reason to believe they’d not be treated.
In the end, the researchers’ predictions regarding waiting times were confirmed, suggesting that the dogs at some point could be discerning intention from non-intent.
Other dog behaviors observed during the test also supported this idea, for example, dogs being more likely lay down or sit upon the floor (interpreted as signals of calm) when they believed that the food was being deliberately kept from them.
To calm the situation the researchers could have used lying and sitting down to calm the participant the researchers note.
“Another option is withholding the reward may have an energizing effect, and the dogs thought the learning process could persuade the unwilling participant to offer rewards.”
