o:3433 Dogs' expectations about occlusion events: from expectancy violation to exploration en Previous research on human infants has shown that violations of basic physical regularities can stimulate exploration, which may represent a type of hypothesis testing aimed at acquiring knowledge about new causal relationships. In this study, we examined whether a similar connection between expectancy violation and exploration exists in nonhuman animals. Specifically, we investigated how dogs react to expectancy violations in the context of occlusion events. Throughout three experiments, dogs exhibited longer looking times at expectancy-inconsistent events than at consistent ones. This finding was further supported by pupil size analyses in the first two eye-tracking experiments. Our results suggest that dogs expect objects to reappear when they are not obstructed by a screen and consider the size of the occluding screen in relation to the occluded object. In Experiment 3, expectancy violations increased the dogs' exploration of the target object, similar to the findings with human infants. We conclude that expectancy violations can provide learning opportunities for nonhuman animals as well. Canis-Familiaris; Invisible Displacement; Physical-Properties; Maximum-Likelihood; Curiosity; Determinants; Regression; Knowledge; Solidity; Objects 1552099 10.1098/rspb.2023.0696 2024-08-27T07:50:39.109Z 44 yes 46 Christoph J. Völter University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna 0000-0002-8368-7201 Ana Tomašić University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna person Laura Nipperdey University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna / University of Leipzig person Ludwig Huber University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna person 0000-0002-0217-136X application/pdf 949934 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:3433 no yes 16 70 1552253 Proceedings of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences 12 290 2003 The Royal Society 2023