Title (eng)
Animals´ understanding of their partner´s role in cooperative tasks
Author
María Teresa Martínez Navarrete
Degree supervisor
Friederike Range
Degree supervisor
Sarah Brosnan
Degree supervisor
Lauren Robinson
Description (eng)
PhD thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2024 The full text is only available to university members. Please log in!
Abstract (eng)
Humans stand out for the scale and flexibility of their cooperation, potentially because they understand the role, intentions, and goals of their partners. However, functionally cooperative outcomes can be obtained despite a lack of understanding of the importance of their partner´s contributions to the task when, for example, subjects independently act towards the same goal. Thus, investigating the extent to which non-human animals understand the role of their partner is crucial for unveiling the mechanisms underlying cooperative behaviors and its evolutionary origins. Given the hypothesis that dogs possess human-like socio-cognitive abilities due to domestication, they might be a telling model for such studies. In this thesis we tested whether and how pet dogs adjusted their behavior to their partners in different cooperative tasks. First, we tested twenty-one dogs with human partners (their owner) in a cooperative task in which they were requested to push a button at the same time as their partner. We found that dogs took into account their partner´s actions in the task and refrained from pressing the button until their partners did. Second, we tested pairs of pet dogs in the Assurance game, to assess whether they coordinate for higher rewards when they have an alternative choice to secure a lower-value reward individually. Our findings indicate that dogs aligned their choices with each other, although only four out of eleven pairs consistently achieved the maximum payoff. Finally, we piloted a computer-based Joint Simon task, to explore whether brown capuchin monkeys have a mental representation of the role of their partner in a joint task. Our aim was to later replicate the task with pet dogs. Ultimately, we did not proceed with that plan, as we found methodological issues in the design of the task in both our study and previous studies with non-human primates that prevented us from interpreting the results in social terms. Considering all the evidence, dogs coordinated in both of our experiments. This coordination probably emerged from mechanisms such as behavioral matching, and we could not conclude that they understood the role of their cooperative partners. We discuss what our results tell about dogs’ socio-cognitive skills and propose several avenues for future research.
Description (deu)
PhD Arbeit - Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien - 2024 Aus rechtlichen Gründen sind nicht alle Teile dieser Arbeit frei zugänglich. Der Zugriff auf den elektronischen Volltext ist auf Angehörige der Veterinärmedizinischen Universität Wien beschränkt. Bitte einloggen!
Type (eng)
Dissertation
Language
[eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:4592
AC number
AC17640266
DOI
10.34876/wnj7-6d81
Number of pages
142
Date issued
2024
License
All rights reserved