A Breed-Comparative Analysis of Canine Responses to Human Knowledge States in an Auditory False Belief Study

Understanding the cognitive abilities of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) continues to provide new insights into the evolution of social intelligence. Within this field, some theories suggest socio-cognitive abilities of dogs are an incidental by-product of the broader domestication process, while others imply certain dog breeds were directly selected for interaction with humans. Previous studies have highlighted breed differences in areas such as comprehension of human communicative signals (e.g. cue following) and human directed gazing or dependency. These findings suggest that breed selection for tasks requiring cooperation versus independence may play a significant role. This thesis investigated potential breed type differences in canine responses to human knowledge states in an auditory false belief task. The primary objective was to replicate findings from a previous visual false belief task, aiming for a similar breed composition. Utilising an auditory false belief paradigm to manipulate a human’s knowledge state regarding an event’s outcome, a sample of 206 dogs was tested. Subjects were broadly categorised into breed types based on their working style, cooperative (N=183) and independent (N=23). All tested dogs completed necessary familiarisation phases, demonstrating task comprehension. The central finding of the current was the absence of a statistically significant overall difference in the tendency of cooperative and independent dog breed types to follow misleading human suggestions. This outcome, contrasting earlier studies, may suggest that for dogs’ interpretation of human knowledge states the sensory modality of cues play a critical role.