Perception of animacy leads to expectation of goal-directed behaviour in dogs
Zsuzsanna Gedai, Ádám Miklósi, Judit Abdai

TL;DR
Dogs expect animate objects to act with goals, not just humans, suggesting they can anticipate goal-directed behavior based on perception of animacy.
Contribution
This study shows that dogs' expectation of goal-directed behavior is linked to perception of animacy, not just human-specific cues.
Findings
Dogs looked longer at the goal object when the actor moved in a route-consistent manner.
Dogs anticipated goal-directed behavior regardless of whether the actor was human or robot.
Switching object locations revealed dogs expected actors to target the goal object, not just the location.
Abstract
Human newborns preferentially attend to self-propelled objects, and three-month-olds expect them to act in a goal-directed manner. Dogs also prefer animate objects, and anticipate human actions to be goal-driven, but it is unclear whether perceiving an object as animate leads to the expectation that it has goals. Here, first dogs observed either (1) a human moving around the room, (2) a robot interacting with a human, (3) a robot displaying self-propelled motion, or (4) a robot moving ambiguously. Next, the human or the robot repeatedly approached one of two objects. Finally, the objects’ places were switched, and the actor approached the same-object or same-location as before. We measured dogs’ look toward the objects after switching their locations. Dogs looked at the goal object before the actor turned toward either object, and looked longer at the goal object when the actor moved in…
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Taxonomy
TopicsChild and Animal Learning Development · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Action Observation and Synchronization
