Do Emotional Cues Influence the Performance of Domestic Dogs in an Observational Learning Task?

ABSTRACT: Using social information is not indiscriminate and being able to choose what to copy and from whom to copy is critical. Dogs are able to learn socially, to recognize, and respond to dog as well as human emotional expressions, and to make reputation-like inferences based on how people behave towards their owner. Yet, the mechanisms dogs use for obtaining and utilizing social information are still to be fully understood, especially concerning whether emotional cues influence dogs' social learning. Therefore, our main aim was to test the hypothesis that an emotionally charged (negative, positive, or neutral) interaction with the demonstrator of a "V" detour task prior to testing would affect subjects' performance, by: (i) changing the value of the information provided by the demonstrator or (

SUBMITTER: Albuquerque N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8172801 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature