ArticleScientific reports2021
Dogs distinguish human intentional and unintentional action.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- 'Unwilling' vs. 'Unable': do domesticated dogs choose partners based on their intentional actions?Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Do dogs rationally infer the causes of failed actions?PloS one · 2026Article
- Dogs as a model to study the emergence of concept manipulation skills for language-readiness.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Let's talk about "talking" dogs! Reviewing the science behind a bold idea.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Domestic dogs as a comparative model for social neuroscience: Advances and challenges.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Pet dogs (Canis familiaris) re-engage humans after joint activity.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Visual perception of emotion cues in dogs: a critical review of methodologies.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Unwilling or unable? Using three-dimensional tracking to evaluate dogs' reactions to differing human intentions.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Context and prediction matter for the interpretation of social interactions across species.PloS one · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. But it is unclear from these everyday observations whether the dogs simply respond to the action outcomes or whether they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions. Are dogs able to distinguish intentional human actions from unintentional ones, even when the action outcomes are the same? We tested dogs' ability to discriminate these action categories by adapting the so-called "Unwilling vs. Unable" paradigm. This paradigm compares subjects' reactions to intentional and unintentional human behaviour. All dogs received three conditions: In the unwilling-condition, an experimenter intentionally withheld a reward from them. In the two unable-conditions, she unintentionally withheld the reward, either because she was clumsy or because she was physically prevented from giving the reward to the dog. Dogs clearly distinguished in their spontaneous behaviour between unwilling- and unable-conditions. This indicates that dogs indeed distinguish intentional actions from unintentional behaviour. We critically discuss our findings with regard to dogs' understanding of human intentional action.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.