The attribution of navigational- and goal-directed agency in dogs (Canis familiaris) and human toddlers (Homo sapiens).

Both human infants and nonhuman primates can recognize unfamiliar entities as instrumental agents ascribing to them goals and efficiency of goal-pursuit. This competence relies on movement cues indicating distal sensitivity to the environment and choice of efficient goal-approach. Although dogs' evolved sensitivity to social cues allow them to recognize humans as communicative agents, it remains unclear whether they have also evolved a basic concept of instrumental agency.

Feature or location? Infants and adults adopt different strategies to search for a hidden toy in an ambiguous task.

Evidence suggests that infants and adults attribute different importance to certain object properties when performing object-directed actions. Namely, infants tend to rely on information about an object's location, whereas adults are more likely to base their actions on its features. In this study, we tested whether the strategic choices of infants (aged 13 months) and adults would be modified by the context of the demonstration.

What or where? The meaning of referential human pointing for dogs (Canis familiaris).

Dogs have a unique capacity to follow human pointing, and thus it is often assumed that they can comprehend the referential meaning of such signals. However, it is still unclear whether dogs perceive human directional gestures as signals referring to a target object (indicating what to manipulate) or a spatial cue (indicating where to do something). In the present study, we investigated which of these alternative interpretations may explain dogs' responses to human pointing gestures in ostensive communicative and nonostensive cuing contexts.

The order of ostensive and referential signals affects dogs' responsiveness when interacting with a human.

Ostensive signals preceding referential cues are crucial in communication-based human knowledge acquisition processes. Since dogs are sensitive to both human ostensive and referential signals, here we investigate whether they also take into account the order of these signals and, in an object-choice task, respond to human pointing more readily when it is preceded by an ostensive cue indicating communicative intent. Adult pet dogs (n = 75) of different breeds were presented with different sequences of a three-step human action.