Title
Dogs with prior experience of a task still overimitate their caregiver
Language
English
Description (en)
Domestic dogs have been shown to copy their caregiver's actions, including ones which are causally-irrelevant to a physical goal-a behaviour called "overimitation". In a new overimitation task with a non-food reward, this study investigated "causal misunderstanding"-falsely assuming causally-irrelevant actions to have functional relevancy-as an explanation for dog overimitation (N = 81). By providing dogs with prior experience of the task to learn about the consequences of its irrelevant box-stepping and relevant bucket-opening action to obtain a toy-ball, we tested whether and when dogs would copy their caregiver's irrelevant-action demonstrations. Dogs with and without prior experience were compared to a third (control) group of dogs, who had neither prior experience nor caregiver demonstrations of the task. Results revealed that the timing of overimitation, rather than its frequency, was closely related to dogs' prior experience: dogs with prior experience attended to their reward first, then interacted with the irrelevant box later ("post-goal overimitation"), while dogs without prior experience first interacted with the irrelevant box ("pre-goal overimitation"). Our results suggest that, when action consequences are understood, dogs are overimitating for a secondary social goal that is clearly distinct from the task goal of obtaining a physical reward.
Keywords (en)
Animals; Dogs; Caregivers Psychology; Behavior, Animal Physiology; Male; Reward; Female; Imitative Behavior; Humans; Learning
DOI
10.1038/s41598-024-70700-3
Author of the digital object
Louise  Mackie  (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna)
Ludwig  Huber  (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna)
Format
application/pdf
Size
1.7 MB
Licence Selected
CC BY 4.0 International
Type of publication
Article
Name of Publication (en)
Scientific Reports
Pages or Volume
12
Volume
14
Number
1
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Publication Date
2024
Content
Details
Object type
PDFDocument
Format
application/pdf
Created
25.10.2024 08:51:57
This object is in collection
Metadata
University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (Vetmeduni Vienna) | Veterinärplatz 1 | A-1210 Vienna | Austria | T +43 1 25077-0