Hilary Beason Ronnie Steinitz

Abstract : Social Cognition as an Adaptation to Coevolution Alongside Humans

Some 14,000 years ago, dogs (Canis familiaris) originated from wolves, social animals that engage in a number of co-operative behaviors. This evolved cognitive abilities that help them predict and interpret the actions of others. During domestication, dogs were likely to have been selected for mental adaptations for their roles in human society. Through the evolutionary process, dogs became adapted to living within our society, their new ecological niche. They were selected for adaptations to our lives, and these adaptations led to significant changes in their communication, social behaviors, cooperation abilities and attachment to humans. Our artificial selection of them was the driving force for their natural selection: in the form of competing within this new environment, for survival. By naturally selecting for higher social cognition- they would appeal more to humans, thus be selected for when breeding. Characteristics such as tameness and the ability to better understand our human social communication were valuable. Dogs are so well adapted to our social cues that they outperform non-human primates in certain social related tasks. Although not possessing the physical ability to point, they are able to understand the gesture, in a heterospecific setting. They prove to have very high social cognition but not necessarily a higher cognitive psychology. So we set out to see if we could find an example for higher cognition, in the form of mental representation. We hypothesized that although dogs have advanced social cognitive abilities, they are not capable of higher cognitive psychology, in the form of mental representation. If dogs had developed cognitive psychology, they would be able to perform well on a mental representation task. We set up a model to test representation abilities. Specific, distinct symbols were chosen, that were easily visible and differentiable. We taught Branson, a 3 year old male German Shepherd mix, that small represents large, as a new social set of rules. We then tested whether he could implement this new socially transmitted knowledge onto a new set of symbols, but our results were negative. Not being able to perform the latter meant he could not project his new social knowledge onto a new set of symbols, suggesting he is not capable of representation. Thus has a limited higher cognitive psychology. Our study, and others, supports the hypothesis that dogs dont necessarily posses high cognitive abilities but do posses some abilities that non-human primates do not exhibit, as a result of

coevolution with us. Dogs had to better adapt to understanding OUR (human) communicative skills, in order to survive- to be selected. Thus, their superb social skills and social cognition was a hidden advantage that allowed them to evolve alongside our cultural development.

References: Cooper, J. J., Ashton, C., Bishop, S., West, R., Mills, D., & Young, R. (2003). Clever hounds: Social cognition in the domestic dog. . Applied Animal Behaviour Science, (83), 229-244. This article explains why dogs are good examples of studying cognitive behaviors. This article gave us background information as well as definitions for specific approaches in domestication of dogs. Erdhegyi, A., Topl, J., Virnyi, Z., & Miklsi, A. (2007). Dog-logic: inferential reasoning in a two-way choice task and its restricted use. Animal Behaviour DOI:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.03.004. This article discusses dogs cognitive abilities and mental capacities. Experiments were designed to test whether adult pet dogs are able to show inferential reasoning when searching for their toy in a series of two-way choice tasks. Supports the primary importance of social cueing, a relevant point in our argument. We used this article to compare and contrast with non human primate abilities in similar tasks. Hauser, M., Comins, J., Pytka, L., Cahill, D., & Calderon, S. (2010). What experimental experience affects dogs comprehension of human communicative actions?. Behavioural Processes, (86), 7-20. Hauser discussed dogs abilities to comprehend human communicative actions. This was relevant to our study in discussing the cognitive difference and similarities between dogs, nonhuman primates, and humans. Miklosi, A., Topalt, J., & Csanyi, V. (2003). Comparitive social cognition: what can dogs teach us?. Animal Behaviors, (67), 995-1004. This article mentions that dogs progressed through an evolutionary process that allowed them to become adapted to human society. The evidence explained that dogs have adapted to human societies and that these adaptations led to a difference when compared to wild counterparts, wolves, a comparative measure we use in our presentation. This article is key to our research in terms of dogs understanding human communication skills while

other species such as chimpanzee do not; such as in the pointing characteristic. Mentioning and again reiterating that dogs have become adapted to human societies while the chimpanzee species have not. Morey, D. F. 1994. The early evolution of the domestic dog. Amer. Sci. 82: 336-347. This article gives us an in depth history of the evolutionary processes of the dog point of view. In order to exhaustively cover the idea of dogs social cognition as an adaptation to coevolution alongside humans, we used the article to explore the conjoint history of the two species. Shipman, P. (2012). Do the eyes have it ?. American Scientist, 100, 197-201. This article was about domestication possibly during the Neanderthal time in which possibly made them extinct but allowing modern societies with included the domestication of dogs for survival. The article stated that the domestication process started by selection of certain traits but apparently were naturally fit for our human world. This article gave us supplemental data about how the domestication from wolves to dogs were brought into the modern world from a stand point of neanderthal time.