Synchronous citizen science with dogs.

Citizen science approaches have grown in popularity over the years, partly due to their ability to reach a wider audience and produce more generalizable samples. In dogs, these studies, though, have been limited in their controls over materials or experimental protocols, with guardians typically reporting results without researcher supervision. Over two studies, we explored and validated a synchronous citizen science approach. We had dog guardians act as experimenters while being supervised by a researcher over Zoom. In study 1, we demonstrated that synchronous citizen science produced equivalent levels of performance to in-lab designs in a choice task. Consistent with past in-lab research, dogs selected a treat (vs. an empty plate) in a two-alternative forced-choice task. In study 2, we showed that Zoom methods are also appropriate for studies utilizing looking time measures. We explored dogs' looking behaviors when a bag of treats was placed in an unreachable location, and dogs' guardians were either attentive or inattentive while dogs attempted to retrieve the treats. Consistent with past work, dogs in the attentive condition looked at their guardian for longer periods and had a shorter latency to first look than dogs in the inattentive condition. Overall, we have demonstrated that synchronous citizen science studies with dogs are feasible and produce valid results consistent with those found in a typical lab setting.

Evidence for abstract representations in children but not capuchin monkeys.

The use of abstract higher-level knowledge (also called overhypotheses) allows humans to learn quickly from sparse data and make predictions in new situations. Previous research has suggested that humans may be the only species capable of abstract knowledge formation, but this remains controversial. There is also mixed evidence for when this ability emerges over human development. Kemp et al. (2007) proposed a computational model of how overhypotheses could be learned from sparse examples. We provide the first direct test of this model: an ecologically valid paradigm for testing two species, capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) and 4- to 5-year-old human children. We presented participants with sampled evidence from different containers which suggested that all containers held items of uniform type (type condition) or of uniform size (size condition). Subsequently, we presented two new test containers and an example item from each: a small, high-valued item and a large but low-valued item. Participants could then choose from which test container they would like to receive the next sample - the optimal choice was the container that yielded a large item in the size condition or a high-valued item in the type condition. We compared performance to a priori predictions made by models with and without the capacity to learn overhypotheses. Children's choices were consistent with the model predictions and thus suggest an ability for abstract knowledge formation in the preschool years, whereas monkeys performed at chance level.

Head-mounted mobile eye-tracking in the domestic dog: A new method.

Humans rely on dogs for countless tasks, ranging from companionship to highly specialized detection work. In their daily lives, dogs must navigate a human-built visual world, yet comparatively little is known about what dogs visually attend to as they move through their environment. Real-world eye-tracking, or head-mounted eye-tracking, allows participants to freely move through their environment, providing more naturalistic results about visual attention while interacting with objects and agents. In dogs, real-world eye-tracking has the potential to inform our understanding of cross-species cognitive abilities as well as working dog training; however, a robust and easily deployed head-mounted eye-tracking method for dogs has not previously been developed and tested. We present a novel method for real-world eye-tracking in dogs, using a simple head-mounted mobile apparatus mounted onto goggles designed for dogs. This new method, adapted from systems that are widely used in humans, allows for eye-tracking during more naturalistic behaviors, namely walking around and interacting with real-world stimuli, as well as reduced training time as compared to traditional stationary eye-tracking methods. We found that while completing a simple forced-choice treat finding task, dogs look primarily to the treat, and we demonstrated the accuracy of this method using alternative gaze-tracking methods. Additionally, eye-tracking revealed more fine-grained time course information and individual differences in looking patterns.

Searching high and low: domestic dogs' understanding of solidity.

Physical reasoning appears central to understanding how the world works, suggesting adaptive function across the animal kingdom. However, conclusive evidence for inferential reasoning about physical objects is limited to primates. We systematically tested a central feature-understanding of solidity-in domestic dogs, by adapting a validated procedure (the shelf task) previously used to test children and non-human primates. Dogs watched a treat dropped into an apparatus with a shelf either present (treat landing on the shelf) or absent (treat landing on the bottom surface) and chose where to search for it (above or below the shelf). Across four studies (n = 64), we manipulated visual access to the treat trajectory and apparatus interior. Dogs correctly inferred the location of treats using physical cues when the shelf was present (Study 1), and learned rapidly when visual cues of continuity were limited (Study 2), and when the shelf was absent (Study 3). Dogs were at chance when the apparatus was fully occluded, and the presence and absence of the shelf varied across trials within subjects, and showed no evidence of learning (Study 4). The findings of these four studies suggest that dogs may be able to make some inferences using solidity and continuity and do not exhibit proximity or gravity biases. However, dogs did not always search correctly from Trial 1, and failed to search correctly when the rewarded location varied within-subjects, suggesting a role for learning, and possible limits to their ability to make inferences about physical objects.

What's the point? Domestic dogs' sensitivity to the accuracy of human informants.

Dogs excel at understanding human social-communicative gestures like points and can distinguish between human informants who vary in characteristics such as knowledge or familiarity. This study explores if dogs, like human children, can use human social informants' past accuracy when deciding whom to trust. Experiment 1 tested whether dogs would behave differently in the presence of an accurate (vs. inaccurate) informant. Dogs followed an accurate informant's point significantly above chance. Further, when presented with an inaccurate point, dogs were more likely to ignore it and choose the correct location. Experiment 2 tested whether dogs could use informant past accuracy to selectively follow the point of the previously accurate informant. In test trials when informants simultaneously pointed at different locations (only one of which contained a treat), dogs chose the accurate informant at chance levels. Experiment 3 controlled for non-social task demands (e.g. understanding of hidden baiting and occlusion events) that may have influenced Experiment 2 performance. In test trials, dogs chose to follow the accurate (vs. inaccurate) informant. This suggests that like children, dogs may be able to use informants' past accuracy when choosing between information sources.

Belief as a non-epistemic adaptive benefit.

Although rationalization about one's own beliefs and actions can improve an individual's future decisions, beliefs can provide other benefits unrelated to their epistemic truth value, such as group cohesion and identity. A model of resource-rational cognition that accounts for these benefits may explain unexpected and seemingly irrational thought patterns, such as belief polarization.

Finding events in a continuous world: A developmental account.

Event segmentation is a fundamental process of human cognition that organizes the continuous flux of activity into discrete, hierarchical units. The mechanism of event segmentation in infants seems to parallel the mechanism studied in adults, which centers on action predictability. Statistical learning appears to bootstrap infants' event segmentation by generating action predictions without relying on prior knowledge. Infants' first-hand experiences with goal-directed actions further enhance their prediction of others' actions. Scaffolds for event segmentation are available in the input, with caregivers providing redundant cues to event boundaries through the use of motionese and acoustic packaging. Research points to the importance of developing event segmentation skills for development in other areas of cognition, including memory, social competence, and language, though more work is needed to capture the directionality of effects. Although event segmentation is a relatively new area of focus in cognition, this process illuminates how children make sense of an ever-changing world.

Intuitive probabilistic inference in capuchin monkeys.

The ability to reason about probabilities has ecological relevance for many species. Recent research has shown that both preverbal infants and non-human great apes can make predictions about single-item samples randomly drawn from populations by reasoning about proportions. To further explore the evolutionary origins of this ability, we conducted the first investigation of probabilistic inference in a monkey species (capuchins; Sapajus spp.). Across four experiments, capuchins (N = 19) were presented with two populations of food items that differed in their relative distribution of preferred and non-preferred items, such that one population was more likely to yield a preferred item. In each trial, capuchins had to select between hidden single-item samples randomly drawn from each population. In Experiment 1 each population was homogeneous so reasoning about proportions was not required; Experiments 2-3 replicated previous probabilistic reasoning research with infants and apes; and Experiment 4 was a novel condition untested in other species, providing an important extension to previous work. Results revealed that at least some capuchins were able to make probabilistic inferences via reasoning about proportions as opposed to simpler quantity heuristics. Performance was relatively poor in Experiment 4, so the possibility remains that capuchins may use quantity-based heuristics in some situations, though further work is required to confirm this. Interestingly, performance was not at ceiling in Experiment 1, which did not involve reasoning about proportions, but did involve sampling. This suggests that the sampling task posed demands in addition to reasoning about proportions, possibly related to inhibitory control, working memory, and/or knowledge of object permanence.

Inferring action structure and causal relationships in continuous sequences of human action.

In the real world, causal variables do not come pre-identified or occur in isolation, but instead are embedded within a continuous temporal stream of events. A challenge faced by both human learners and machine learning algorithms is identifying subsequences that correspond to the appropriate variables for causal inference. A specific instance of this problem is action segmentation: dividing a sequence of observed behavior into meaningful actions, and determining which of those actions lead to effects in the world. Here we present a Bayesian analysis of how statistical and causal cues to segmentation should optimally be combined, as well as four experiments investigating human action segmentation and causal inference. We find that both people and our model are sensitive to statistical regularities and causal structure in continuous action, and are able to combine these sources of information in order to correctly infer both causal relationships and segmentation boundaries.

How can I find what I want? Can children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys form abstract representations to guide their behavior in a sampling task?

concepts are a powerful tool for making wide-ranging predictions in new situations based on little experience. Whereas looking-time studies suggest an early emergence of this ability in human infancy, other paradigms like the relational match to sample task often fail to detect abstract concepts until late preschool years. Similarly, non-human animals show difficulties and often succeed only after long training regimes. Given the considerable influence of slight task modifications, the conclusiveness of these findings for the development and phylogenetic distribution of abstract reasoning is debated. Here, we tested the abilities of 3 to 5-year-old children, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys in a unified and more ecologically valid task design based on the concept of "overhypotheses" (Goodman, 1955). Participants sampled high- and low-valued items from containers that either each offered items of uniform value or a mix of high- and low-valued items. In a test situation, participants should switch away earlier from a container offering low-valued items when they learned that, in general, items within a container are of the same type, but should stay longer if they formed the overhypothesis that containers bear a mix of types. We compared each species' performance to the predictions of a probabilistic hierarchical Bayesian model forming overhypotheses at a first and second level of abstraction, adapted to each species' reward preferences. Children and, to a more limited extent, chimpanzees demonstrated their sensitivity to abstract patterns in the evidence. In contrast, capuchin monkeys did not exhibit conclusive evidence for the ability of abstract knowledge formation.

One- and two-year-olds grasp that causes must precede their effects.

Knowing the temporal direction of causal relations is critical for producing desired outcomes and explaining events. Existing evidence suggests that children start to grasp that causes must precede their effects (the temporal priority principle) by age 3; however, whether younger children also understand this has, to our knowledge, not previously been tested. Given the importance of temporal priority in making sense of the world, we explored when knowledge of this principle develops. In the present study, conducted in a lab or museum in a Canadian city, 1- and 2-year-old children observed an adult perform action A on a puzzle box (e.g., spinning a dial), following which an effect E occurred (a sticker was dispensed), following which the adult performed action B (e.g., pushing a button; A-E-B sequence). In line with the temporal priority principle, toddlers were significantly more likely to manipulate A than B (Experiment 1, N = 41, 22 female), even when A was spatially disconnected from the sticker dispenser and further from it than action B (Experiment 2, N = 42, 25 female). In Experiment 3 (N = 50, 25 female), toddlers observed an A-B-E sequence such that both actions A and B were performed prior to effect E. Here, they primarily intervened on B, which ruled out that success in Experiments 1-2 was based on a primacy effect. A lack of any age effects across experiments suggests that within the second year of life, children already grasp that causes must precede their effects, providing key insights into causal reasoning in early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Causal learning, counterfactual reasoning and pretend play: a cross-cultural comparison of Peruvian, mixed- and low-socioeconomic status U.S. children.

Pretend play universally emerges during early childhood and may support the development of causal inference and counterfactual reasoning. However, the amount of time spent pretending, the value that adults place on pretence and the scaffolding adults provide vary by both culture and socioeconomic status (SES). In middle class U.S. preschoolers, accuracy on a pretence-based causal reasoning task predicted performance on a similar causal counterfactual task. We explore the relationship between cultural environment, pretence and counterfactual reasoning in low-income Peruvian (N = 62) and low-income U.S. (N = 57) 3- to 4-year olds, and contrast findings against previous findings in an age-matched, mixed-SES U.S. sample (N = 60). Children learned a novel causal relationship, then answered comparable counterfactual and pretence-based questions about the relationship. Children's responses for counterfactual and pretence measures differed across populations, with Peruvian and lower-income U.S. children providing fewer causally consistent responses when compared with middle class U.S. children. Nevertheless, correlations between the two measures emerged in all populations. Across cohorts, children also provided more causally consistent answers during pretence than counterfactually. Our findings strengthen the hypothesis that causal pretend play is related to causal counterfactual reasoning across cultural contexts, while also suggesting a role for systematic environmental differences. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.

Children's use of majority information is influenced by pragmatic inferences and task domain.

Do children always conform to a majority's testimony, or do the pragmatics of that testimony matter? We investigated the influence of pragmatics on conforming to a majority across 2 domains: when learning about object labels and when learning about causal relationships. Four- and 5-year-olds (N = 250) were given a choice between an object endorsed by a 3-person majority, or one endorsed by a single minority informant. Within each domain, there were 4 pragmatic conditions, each with modified testimony so that the majority either explicitly provided an opinion about or pragmatically implied their opinion about the alternative object chosen by the minority. In the unendorsed condition, informants explicitly unendorsed the unchosen object. In the implied condition, informants said nothing about the unchosen object. In the ignorance condition, informants explicitly expressed ignorance about the unchosen object, and in the hidden condition, the chosen object was the only one present at the time of the endorsement. We found that children were most likely to endorse the majority object in the unendorsed condition, in which the majority's opinion was explicitly stated, and least likely in the hidden condition, in which only one object at a time was present, with the other 2 conditions intermediate. Children's preference for majority testimony also depended on the task domain, with a stronger preference for the majority in the language task than causal task. Children might not simply have a majority bias; rather, they use majority information differently depending on the pragmatics and task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring information use in children's decision-making: Base-rate neglect and trust in testimony.

Classic literature in judgment and decision-making shows that when testimony information conflicts with base-rates, adults typically underuse base-rate information and rely heavily on testimony (Bar-Hillel, 1980; Lyon & Slovic, 1976; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). Although children can use base-rates (Denison, Konopczynski, Garcia, & Xu, 2006; Kushnir, Xu, & Wellman, 2010) and testimony (Koenig & Harris, 2005) separately in their inferences, whether they show a similar tendency toward weighing testimony more heavily is unknown. Four- and 5-year-old children were asked to guess the color of a dog's collar, drawn from a group of 10 dogs (e.g., 8 blue: 2 yellow). Children were also presented with testimony about the dog's collar that was from either a previously accurate or inaccurate witness. In Experiment 1 (N = 120), children were presented with only base-rate or testimony information. They relied on base-rates at above chance levels and relied on testimony at rates that approximately matched the witness's previous accuracy. In Experiment 2 (N = 160), when base-rates and testimony were presented together and conflicted, a majority of children endorsed the color consistent with the accurate witness's testimony, neglecting base-rates. However, when presented with the inaccurate witness's testimony, children were more likely to endorse the color indicated by the base-rates. Children appear to rely on the testimony of an accurate but fallible witness, revealing that a tendency to neglect base-rates in favor of testimony emerges early in development, yet they remain sensitive to the witness's accuracy when presented with multiple sources of information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

What factors really influence domestic dogs' (Canis familiaris) search for an item dropped down a diagonal tube? The tubes task revisited.

It has been suggested that domestic dogs-like young human children-have a "gravity bias"; they expect an unsupported object to fall straight down, regardless of any obstacles that redirect or halt its path. In the diagonal tube task, this bias is revealed by a persistent tendency to search the incorrect location directly beneath the top of the tube the item is dropped into, rather than the correct location attached to the bottom of the tube. We presented dogs (N = 112) with seven different versions of the diagonal tube task, to examine what factors influence their search behavior for an object dropped down a diagonal tube, and investigate their physical reasoning skills more generally. Contrary to previous claims, we found no evidence for dogs exhibiting a persistent, or even a Trial 1, gravity bias. However, dogs were also unable to search correctly for the reward, even when it could be heard rolling through the tube, though they succeeded when the tube was transparent (Experiments 1a-c). Experiment 2 suggested that dogs might search on the basis of proximity, but Experiments 3a-b ruled this out and showed that they prefer to commence searching at the center of the apparatus. Finally, when potential sources of bias were eliminated from the task (Experiment 4), dogs' performance was improved, but still not above chance, suggesting that they are unable to reason about the tube's physical-causal mechanism. We conclude that, on current evidence, the gravity bias might be unique to some primate species. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Sensitivity to Shared Information in Social Learning.

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants' knowledge is a particularly important cue for evaluating advice from multiple informants; if the informants share the source of their information or have obtained their information from each other, then their testimony is statistically dependent and may be less reliable than testimony from informants who do not share information. In this study, we use a Bayesian model to determine how rational learners should incorporate the effects of shared information when learning from other people, conducting three experiments that examine whether human learners behave similarly. We find that people are sensitive to a number of different patterns of dependency, supporting the use of a sophisticated strategy for social learning that goes beyond copying the majority, and broadening the situations in which social learning is likely to be an adaptive strategy.

Do you know what I'm thinking? Temporal and spatial brain activity during a theory-of-mind task in children with autism.

The social impairments observed in children with autism spectrum disorder are thought to arise in part from deficits in theory of mind, the ability to understand other people's thoughts and feelings. To determine the temporal-spatial dynamics of brain activity underlying these atypical theory-of-mind processes, we used magnetoencephalography to characterize the sequence of functional brain patterns (i.e. when and where) related to theory-of-mind reasoning in 19 high-functioning children with autism compared to 22 age- and sex-matched typically-developing children aged 8-12 during a false-belief (theory-of-mind) task. While task performance did not differ between the two groups, children with autism showed reduced activation in the left temporoparietal junction between 300-375 and 425-500 ms, as well as increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus from 325 to 375 ms compared to controls. The overlap in decreased temporoparietal junction activity and increased right inferior frontal gyrus activation from 325 to 375 ms suggests that in children with autism, the right inferior frontal gyrus may compensate for deficits in the temporoparietal junction, a neural theory-of-mind network hub. As the right inferior frontal gyrus is involved in inhibitory control, this finding suggests that children with autism rely on executive functions to bolster their false-belief understanding.

Children's causal inferences from conflicting testimony and observations.

Preschoolers use both direct observation of statistical data and informant testimony to learn causal relationships. Can children integrate information from these sources, especially when source reliability is uncertain? We investigate how children handle a conflict between what they hear and what they see. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds were introduced to a machine and 2 blocks by a knowledgeable informant who claimed to know which block was better at activating the machine, or by a naïve informant who guessed. Children then observed probabilistic evidence contradicting the informant and were asked to identify the block that worked better. Next, the informant claimed to know which of 2 novel blocks was a better activator, and children chose 1 block to try themselves. After observing conflicting data, children were more likely to say the informant's block was better when the informant was knowledgeable than when she was naïve. Children also used the statistical data to evaluate the informant's reliability and were less likely to try the novel block she endorsed than children in a baseline group who did not observe data. In Experiment 2, children saw conflicting deterministic data; the majority chose the block that consistently activated the machine as better than the endorsed block. Children's causal inferences varied with the confidence of the informant and strength of the statistical data, and informed their future trust in the informant. Children consider the strength of both social and physical causal cues even when they disagree and integrate information from these sources in a rational way.

Do Children Copy an Expert or a Majority? Examining Selective Learning in Instrumental and Normative Contexts.

This study examined whether instrumental and normative learning contexts differentially influence 4- to 7-year-old children's social learning strategies; specifically, their dispositions to copy an expert versus a majority consensus. Experiment 1 (N = 44) established that children copied a relatively competent "expert" individual over an incompetent individual in both kinds of learning context. In experiment 2 (N = 80) we then tested whether children would copy a competent individual versus a majority, in each of the two different learning contexts. Results showed that individual children differed in strategy, preferring with significant consistency across two different test trials to copy either the competent individual or the majority. This study is the first to show that children prefer to copy more competent individuals when shown competing methods of achieving an instrumental goal (Experiment 1) and provides new evidence that children, at least in our "individualist" culture, may consistently express either a competency or majority bias in learning both instrumental and normative information (Experiment 2). This effect was similar in the instrumental and normative learning contexts we applied.

Learning about causes from people and about people as causes: probabilistic models and social causal reasoning.

A major challenge children face is uncovering the causal structure of the world around them. Previous research on children's causal inference has demonstrated their ability to learn about causal relationships in the physical environment using probabilistic evidence. However, children must also learn about causal relationships in the social environment, including discovering the causes of other people's behavior, and understanding the causal relationships between others' goal-directed actions and the outcomes of those actions. In this chapter, we argue that social reasoning and causal reasoning are deeply linked, both in the real world and in children's minds. Children use both types of information together and in fact reason about both physical and social causation in fundamentally similar ways. We suggest that children jointly construct and update causal theories about their social and physical environment and that this process is best captured by probabilistic models of cognition. We first present studies showing that adults are able to jointly infer causal structure and human action structure from videos of unsegmented human motion. Next, we describe how children use social information to make inferences about physical causes. We show that the pedagogical nature of a demonstrator influences children's choices of which actions to imitate from within a causal sequence and that this social information interacts with statistical causal evidence. We then discuss how children combine evidence from an informant's testimony and expressed confidence with evidence from their own causal observations to infer the efficacy of different potential causes. We also discuss how children use these same causal observations to make inferences about the knowledge state of the social informant. Finally, we suggest that psychological causation and attribution are part of the same causal system as physical causation. We present evidence that just as children use covariation between physical causes and their effects to learn physical causal relationships, they also use covaration between people's actions and the environment to make inferences about the causes of human behavior.