ArticleAnimal cognition2020
Why do dogs look back at the human in an impossible task? Looking back behaviour may be over-interpreted.
Article in Animal cognition, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Striking global similarities in dog-human interactions.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Behavioural manifestations of human-directed social motivation in dogs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Changes in cognitive performance following repeated exposure to a hand-touch learning task across breed clades of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris).Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Pet dogs prefer to work alone than to engage in a challenging cooperative task with conspecifics.PeerJ · 2026Article
- Deference or sociability? Insights from dogs' and wolves' human-directed behavior in a food-conflict task.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Shy or bold, all get caught: Two active capture methods show no behavioural bias in a large herbivore.PloS one · 2026Article
- Object-directed behaviors and human-directed sociability are linked in free-ranging dog puppies.iScience · 2025Article
- Evidence for the communicative function of human-directed gazing in 6- to 7-week-old dog puppies.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Free-ranging dogs match a human's preference in a foraging task.Current zoology · 2024Article
- Street-wise dog testing: Feasibility and reliability of a behavioural test battery for free-ranging dogs in their natural habitat.PloS one · 2024Article
- Comparative neurogenetics of dog behavior complements efforts towards human neuropsychiatric genetics.Human genetics · 2023Review
- Function predicts how people treat their dogs in a global sample.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Dogs take into account the actions of a human partner in a cooperative task.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Disentangling help-seeking and giving up: differential human-directed gazing by dogs in a modified unsolvable task paradigm.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Serum Oxytocin in Cows Is Positively Correlated with Caregiver Interactions in the Impossible Task Paradigm.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- A review of the unsolvable task in dog communication and cognition: comparing different methodologies.Animal cognition · 2021Review
- Effect of Sex and Reproductive Status on Inhibitory Control and Social Cognition in the Domestic Dog (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- The Untrained Response of Pet Dogs to Human Epileptic Seizures.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Personality and Cognitive Profiles of Animal-Assisted Intervention Dogs and Pet Dogs in an Unsolvable Task.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Grumpy Dogs Are Smart Learners-The Association between Dog-Owner Relationship and Dogs' Performance in a Social Learning Task.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The impossible task paradigm has been extensively used to study the looking back behaviour in dogs. This behaviour is commonly considered a social problem-solving strategy: dogs facing an unsolvable task, soon give up and look back at the experimenter to ask for help. We aimed to test if the looking back in an impossible task does indeed represent a social problem-solving strategy. We used a modified version of the classic impossible task, in which the subjects simultaneously faced three possible and one impossible trials. Additionally, subjects were tested in four different conditions: social condition (with an unknown experimenter); asocial condition (subject alone); 'dummy' human condition (with a 'dummy' human); object condition (with a big sheet of cardboard). Finally, we compared two populations of dogs differing in their experience of receiving help from humans: 20 pet dogs tested in their houses and 31 free-ranging dogs tested in Morocco. We found that the pet dogs and free-ranging dogs had similar persistence in interacting with the impossible task in all conditions. Moreover, subjects looked back with similar latencies at the human, at the dummy human and at the object. Overall, pet dogs looked back longer at the human than free-ranging dogs. This could be interpreted as pet dogs being more attracted to humans and/or having a stronger association between humans and food than free-ranging dogs. Concluding, the looking back in an impossible task does not represent a problem-solving strategy. This behaviour seems rather linked to the subject's persistence, to the salience of the stimuli presented, and potentially to the past reinforcement history.
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