Obey or not obey? Dogs (Canis familiaris) behave differently in response to attentional states of their owners.

Full Abstract

Sixteen domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were tested in a familiar context in a series of 1-min trials on how well they obeyed after being told by their owner to lie down. Food was used in 1/3 of all trials, and during the trial the owner engaged in 1 of 5 activities. The dogs behaved differently depending on the owner's attention to them. When being watched by the owner, the dogs stayed lying down most often and/or for the longest time compared with when the owner read a book, watched TV, turned his or her back on them, or left the room. These results indicate that the dogs sensed the attentional state of their owners by judging observable behavioral cues such as eye contact and eye, head, and body orientation.((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Schwab, Christine (C); Huber, Ludwig (L);

Affiliation: Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. cpriberskyschwab(-atsign-)yahoo.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of comparative psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983) (J Comp Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Aug; vol 120 (issue 3) : pp 169-75

Dates: Created 2006/08/08; Completed 2006/12/22;

PMID: 16893253, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Attention
Awareness
Bonding, Human-Pet
Cooperative Behavior
Cues
Dogs - psychology

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.