What do dogs see in human behavior?

Abstract

Dogs are known to be extremely sensitive to human behavior. They use human gestures such as pointing as a cue better than great apes. A question here is whether this wonderful human companion simply reads apparent "behavior" of us, or, like humans, more deeply some sort of indirect information the behavior implies. In three separate tests, including pointing games with a non-trustworthy person, inference of the door function from human behavior toward it, and third-party affective evaluation of human interactions, we show that dogs often utilize more than superficial actions they observe. Dogs are at least somewhat "cognitivists" rather than pure "behaviorists" that learn everything by simple association with observable stimuli.