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The sensitivity of dogs to human communication cues is probably the closest thing to a central dogma in canine research (pun very much intended).
So we were very surprised to find out human communication cues didn't help dogs in an inhibition task.
https://tinyurl.com/2ajlm8ru
So we were very surprised to find out human communication cues didn't help dogs in an inhibition task.
https://tinyurl.com/2ajlm8ru
Unlike dogs, children are very sensitive to these scaffolding cues. Scaffolding, where adults direct kids' attention to relevant parts of a task, improves children's performance on executive function tasks and predictions future self-control and academic performance.
If dogs' performance was improved by scaffolding behaviour, that would suggest that simply being sensitive to communication cues is sufficient for scaffolding behaviour.
Instead, our findings suggest that kids' assumption that such cues are informative is crucial.
Instead, our findings suggest that kids' assumption that such cues are informative is crucial.
While more work needs to be done, this is consistent with the theory of Natural pedagogy and suggests that human adaptations for social learning aren't just useful for passing on complex cultural information but also help extend our species' executive control.
