title: Generalize or personalize--do dogs transfer an acquired rule to novel situations and persons?
abstract: Recent studies have raised the question of whether dogs, like human infants, comprehend an established rule as generalizable, normative knowledge or rather as episodic information, existing only in the immediate situation. In the current study we tested whether dogs disobeyed a prohibition to take a treat (i) in the presence of the communicator of the ban, (ii) after a temporary absence of the communicator, and (iii) in the presence of a novel person. Dogs disobeyed the rule significantly more often when the communicator left the room for a moment or when they were faced with a new person, than when she stayed present in the room. These results indicate that dogs "forget" a rule as soon as the immediate human context becomes disrupted.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Leipzig, Germany; University of Bremen, Institute of Ecology, Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hertel
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Leipzig, Germany; University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, Portsmouth, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Juliane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kaminski
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D004285:Dogs / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D001841:Human-Animal Bond; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D021641:Recognition, Psychology