Pet dogs (Canis familiaris) re-engage humans after joint activity

Abstract

Joint intentionality, the mutual understanding of shared goals or actions to partake in a common task, is considered an essential building block of theory of mind in humans. Domesticated dogs are unusually adept at comprehending human social cues and cooperating with humans, making it possible that they possess behavioral signatures of joint intentionality in interactions with humans. Horschler and colleagues (Anim Behav 183: 159-168, 2022) examined joint intentionality in a service dog population, finding that upon interruption of a joint experience, dogs preferentially re-engaged their former partner over a passive bystander, a behavior argued to be a signature of joint intentionality in human children. In the current study, we aimed to replicate and extend these results in pet dogs. One familiar person played with the dog and then abruptly stopped. We examined if dogs would preferentially re-engage the player instead of a familiar bystander who was also present. Consistent with the findings of Horschler and colleagues (Anim Behav 183: 159-168, 2022), pet dogs preferentially gazed toward and offered the toy to the player significantly more than the familiar bystander. However, no difference was observed in physical contact. These findings provide preliminary evidence for behavioral signatures of joint intentionality in pet dogs, but future work is needed to understand whether this phenomenon extends to other contexts.

Keywords: Canine cognition; Cooperation; Shared intentionality; Social cognition; Theory of mind.

Fig. 1

An example of what the image would look like in the duration of the experiment

Fig. 2

A Dogs made significantly more eye contact with the player than the bystander (mean eye contact in seconds; error bars represent standard error). B Dogs offered the toy significantly more to the player than the bystander (total count of offers to player and to bystander). C There was no significant difference between player-directed and bystander-directed physical contact (mean seconds of physical contact; error bars represent standard error)