Selective imitation in dogs

Friederike Range, Zsófia Virányi, Ludwig Huber; 2009

The transmission of human cultural knowledge requires the learner to identify the relevant contents to be imitated and reproduced. Already very young infants are equipped with abilities to extract relevant information from demonstrated actions. This is based on an inference of efficiency and a special communication system that does not presuppose either language or high-level theory of mind. One example, where infants use both processes simultaneously is the selective imitation task. Infants will imitate an ineffective action only if the model’s situational constraints did not justify its use and if the demonstration took place in a communicative context. Efficiency and receptivity to social cues given by humans have also been demonstrated in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Whether dogs, however, also would use these processes simultaneously and would perform comparable to human infants in the selective imitation task has not yet been investigated. Here we show that dogs, similarly to infants, selectively re-enact the ineffective method demonstrated by a conspecific suggesting both the influence of the inference about efficiency and the receptive learning effect triggered by the communicative context. These results suggest that selective imitative performance is not necessarily specific to human infants.

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