Context specificity of inhibitory control in dogs

Abstract

Across three experiments, we explored whether a dog's capacity for inhibitory control is stable or variable across decision-making contexts. In the social task, dogs were first exposed to the reputations of a stingy experimenter that never shared food and a generous experimenter who always shared food. In subsequent test trials, dogs were required to avoid approaching the stingy experimenter when this individual offered (but withheld) a higher-value reward than the generous experimenter did. In the A-not-B task, dogs were required to inhibit searching for food in a previously rewarded location after witnessing the food being moved from this location to a novel hiding place. In the cylinder task, dogs were required to resist approaching visible food directly (because it was behind a transparent barrier), in favor of a detour reaching response. Overall, dogs exhibited inhibitory control in all three tasks. However, individual scores were not correlated between tasks, suggesting that context has a large effect on dogs' behavior. This result mirrors studies of humans, which have highlighted intra-individual variation in inhibitory control as a function of the decision-making context. Lastly, we observed a correlation between a subject's age and performance on the cylinder task, corroborating previous observations of age-related decline in dogs' executive function.

Fig. 1

The setup and mean percentage of choices to either option for the three phases of Experiment 1. a Overall value discrimination. b Reputation trials—Stingy experimenter (indicated by ‘S’) was always closest to the dog, while generous experiment (indicated by ‘G’) was always farthest. c Inhibitory control test trials. Error bars represent the standard error of the means

Fig. 2

Left The mean percent of trials that dogs choose the low-value distal reward on value discrimination trials compared to inhibitory control test trials of Experiment 1. Right The percentage of choices to the low-value distal reward always associated with the “generous” experimenter in the last five reputation formation trials and the first five test trials of Experiment 1. Please note that the scales on the y-axes differ across panels. Error bars represent the standard error of the means

Fig. 3

a Mean percent correct choices for the A-not-B task in Experiment 2. The dashed line represents chance performance. b The mean percent of trials that dogs made the correct detour on the first five familiarization trials compared to the first five test trials in Experiment 3. In both graphs, error bars represent the standard error of the means