Research has shown that when you point at something with your finger, dogs interpret this gesture as a directional signal, unlike young children who often focus on the same object. This phenomenon is called spatial bias, and a recent research paper published in the journal Animal Behavior offers potential explanations for why dogs interpret this gesture the way they do. According to researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, this phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual clarity) and how they think, where “smarter” dog breeds prioritize the appearance of an object as much as its location. This suggests that information processing in smarter dogs resembles information processing in humans.
Spatial Bias in Dogs
The researchers wanted to investigate whether spatial bias in dogs is based on senses or on cognition, or a combination of both. One of the authors stated, “Very early on, children interpret the motion as a cue to the object, while dogs consider the motion as a directional signal.” He added, “In other words, regardless of the intention of the person giving the signal, the meaning is different for children and dogs. This phenomenon has been previously observed in dogs using a variety of behavioral tests, ranging from simple joint learning to imitation, but it had not been studied separately before.”
Study Experiment
The sample for the experiment consisted of dogs used in a previous study in 2018, along with dogs specifically participating in the new study, totaling 82 dogs. The predominant breeds were Border Collie (19), Vizsla (17), and Whippets (6). Each animal was brought into a small empty room with its owner and one of the attending researchers. The researcher stood three meters away from the dog and its owner. A training period was conducted using different plastic plates to teach the dogs to associate the presence or absence of an object, or its spatial location, with the presence or absence of food. The dogs were then tested on a series of tasks.
Analysis and Results
For example, one task required the participating dogs to engage in up to 50 trials to teach them the location of the candy, which was always either on the left plate or the right plate. In another task, the researcher placed a white round plate and a black square plate in the middle of the room. The dogs were randomly exposed to each, but they received food only in one type of plate. Learning was determined by how quickly each dog moved towards the correct plate.
Once the dogs had learned those initial tasks, they were given a more complex task involving reversing the direction or the object: if the candy had been placed on the right previously, it would now be found on the left, and if it was previously on the white round plate, it would now be found on the black square plate. The researchers found that dogs learned more quickly when they had to choose the direction, i.e., whether the candy was on the left or right. It was more difficult for dogs to learn whether the candy would be on the black square plate or the white round plate.
The team then needed to determine the differences between the visual and cognitive abilities of dogs in order to assess whether the spatial bias in dogs relied on senses, cognition, or both. Selective dog breeding has produced breeds with different visual capabilities, so another aspect of the study involved measuring the length of the dog’s head, which previous research has shown to be linked to visual clarity. The measure used to assess dog heads is termed “Cephalic Index” (CI), defined as the maximum width of the head multiplied by 100, then divided by the maximum length of the head.
The more…
The dog’s head being shorter increased the clarity of its vision, similar to human vision. This is due to a higher concentration of retinal nerve cells in the center of their visual field, making the vision clearer and allowing dogs to have depth perception. Tests showed that dogs with better visual clarity, who also scored higher in a series of cognitive tests, exhibited less spatial bias. This suggests that the spatial bias in dogs is not just a simple sensory issue but is also affected by how they think. “Smarter” dogs have less spatial bias.
Conclusions
As always, there are some caveats. Notably, the researchers acknowledge that their sample consists exclusively of pet dogs in Hungary, and thus their results may not generalize to stray dogs, for example, or dogs from other geographic regions and cultures. However, one of the authors stated: “We tested their memory, attention skills, and persistence. We found that dogs who performed better cognitively on the more challenging spatial bias task connect information to objects just as easily as they connect it to places. We also see that spatial bias decreases as children’s intelligence increases concerning development.”
Source: Ethology, 2023. 10.1111/eth.13423
Leave a Reply