Why do dogs look back at the human in an impossible task? Looking back behaviour may be over-interpreted.

ABSTRACT: The impossible task paradigm has been extensively used to study the looking back behaviour in dogs. This behaviour is commonly considered a social problem-solving strategy: dogs facing an unsolvable task, soon give up and look back at the experimenter to ask for help. We aimed to test if the looking back in an impossible task does indeed represent a social problem-solving strategy. We used a modified version of the classic impossible task, in which the subjects simultaneously faced three possible and one impossible trials. Additionally, subjects were tested in four different conditions: social condition (with an unknown experimenter); asocial condition (subject alone); 'dummy' human condition (with a 'dummy' human); object condition (with a big sheet of cardboard). Finally, we compared two

SUBMITTER: Lazzaroni M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7181563 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature