"Dogs are able to recognise human communicative intentions both by words and vision", say Hungarian researchers. According to team head József Topál, dogs and infants aged between 6-24 months show remarkable similarities in their socio-cognitive skills at intention recognition. Researchers have recently published their findings in the prestigious Current Biology magazine.

József Topál

In a joint research project among scientists of HAS' Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, the Ethology Department of ELTE University, and Central European University, dogs' eye-movements were tracked by cameras. The four-legged animals were shown a video in which a human turned his head towards one of two identical objects placed either left or right from him. In one experimental setting the person looked directly at the dog and addressed her in a communicative intonation. In another experimental setting the person did not maintain eye contact with the dog and spoke to her in a deep neutral voice. Detecting the precise eye-movements of the dogs, the researchers concluded that dogs tended to follow the gaze of the person, i.e. looked at the same objects more often than not during the experiments. According to József Topál, head of the Comparative Behavioral Research team, who has granted an interview for our website, significant theoretical conclusions can be drawn from the fact that the animals' response to head and eye-movements depends on the communicative intentions of their masters.

    The behavior of an animal following the head and eye-movements of its fellow animal belonging to the same species is a commonly observed phenomenon among animals with highly developed social skills. Researchers, however, used to think that the context-dependent interpretation of such gestures was a uniquely human ability. "In the case of most animal species, following a sudden change in the direction of the gaze does not require a communicative context. A 5-6-month-old infant however reacts to the eye and head movements of those around him only when this behavior is embedded into a communicative context", the researcher said. Therefore, in order for the human baby to correctly interpret such directional gestures, a prior action is necessary in which the person expresses his/her intention to communicate with the infant, e.g. creates an eye contact or verbally addresses the child. The scientist believes that this skill is an important element in effectively transferring cultural knowledge: "an infant cannot speak and understands very little of the surrounding word, therefore it's very important that he/she pays attention to only those situations where he/she can pick up new and relevant knowledge."

    In a way, dogs are subject to the same adaptation pressure as human infants. "They can't speak either and their cognitive capabilities are limited, and thus it's also important for them to be able to make a distinction between knowledge-acquiring situations from irrelevant events in their environment", József Topál said.

    During the evolution of humans and the emergence of culture, the ability to interpret direction-signalling gestures within a given context proved to be an essential step. As an evolutionary parallel, this very ability seems to be present in dogs as well.

    The researcher however was quick to point out that this similarity between the behavior of dogs and human infants is likely to be a functional analogy only. "We don't assume that the cognitive processes behind this behavior are the same in dogs as in humans. Although the behavior displayed is very similar in both cases, the actual cognitive mechanisms are very likely to be different." 

    The results of the Hungarian research team may help understand the reason why many people treat their dogs as children. According to József Topál, dogs are the only artificial species on Earth, since in a sense their behavioral patterns and cognitive mechanism have been shaped by humans. Considering their genetics and anatomy, dogs are actually wolves, social predators, while their social-cognitive skills show the traits of a human infant. "Maybe it is this unique mix of traits that makes many people perceive their dogs as family members rather than just pets", the researcher said.