Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Domestic dogs excel at understanding human social-communicative gestures. The present study explores whether dogscan use peoples past accuracy when deciding who to trust. In Experiment 1, dogs watched an informant hide a treat underone of two containers and then point at one of them. Dogs were more likely to follow an accurate (pointed correctly)vs. the inaccurate (pointed incorrectly) informants point. In Experiment 2, dogs interacted separately with an accurateand inaccurate informant and again were more likely to follow an accurate point. In test trials, dogs did not witnesshiding of the treat and saw the same two informants simultaneously point at different locations. Here, they chose betweenthe locations at chance-level. Dogs inability to selectively follow a previously accurate informant when presented withconflicting information suggests that, unlike children, they may not be able to use past informant accuracy when choosingwhose information to use.