Can Dogs Understand Human Cues? Dogs have been domesticated for about 14,000 years. In that time, have they been able to develop an understanding of human gestures such as pointing or glancing? How about similar nonhuman cues? Researchers Udell, Giglio, and Wynne tested a small number of dogs in order to answer these questions. In this exploration, we will first see whether dogs can understand human gestures as well as nonhuman gestures. To test this, the researchers positioned the dogs about 2.5 meters from the experimenter. Two cups were placed, one on each side of the experimenter. The experimenter would perform some sort of gesture (pointing, bowing, looking) toward one of the cups or there would be some other nonhuman gesture (a mechanical arm pointing, a doll pointing, or a stuffed animal looking) toward one of the cups. The researchers would then see whether the dog would go to the cup that was indicated. There were six dogs tested. We will look at one of the dogs in two of his sets of trials. This dog, a four-year-old mixed breed, was named Harley. Each trial involved one gesture and one pair of cups, with a total of 10 trials in a set. We will start out by looking at one set of trials where the experimenter bowed toward one of the cups to see whether Harley would go to that cup.  Harley was tested 10 times and 9 of those times he chose the correct cup.

STEP 5: Formulate conclusions.

22. Based on this analysis, are you convinced that Harley can understand human cues? Why or why not?

Another study

One important step in a statistical investigation is to consider other models and whether the results can be confirmed in other settings.

23. In a different study, the researchers used a mechanical arm (roughly the size of a human arm) to point at one of the two cups. The researchers tested this to see whether dogs understood nonhuman gestures. In 10 trials, Harley chose the correct cup 6 times.

a. Using the dot plot you obtained when you simulated 1,000 sets of 10 coin flips assuming Harley was just guessing, locate the result of getting 6 heads. Would you consider this an unlikely result in the tail of the distribution?

b. Based on the results of 1,000 simulated sets of 10 coin flips each, would you conclude that Harley would be very unlikely to have picked the correct cup 6 times in 10 attempts if he was randomly guessing between the two cups each time? Explain how your answer relates to the applet’s dot plot.

c. Is this study’s result statistically significant? d. Do the results of this study suggest that Harley just guessing is a plausible explanation for Harley picking the correct cup 6 out of 10 times?

e. Does this study prove that Harley cannot understand the mechanical arm?