MOTION PREDICTION IN DOGS

Being able to predict the future position of a moving object is crucial to hunt a prey and also to communicate and interact with partners. The aim of this study was to investigate a) if the violation of expectancy about movement speed modifies the dogs’ attention and b) the effect of previous stimulus exposure. We developed an inferred motion task, using a projected animation and a real 3D barrier, where the dogs’ orientation toward a moving stimulus was compared among three different test conditions: anticipated, delayed and congruent reappearance of a ball from behind the barrier. Twelve adult pet dogs were enrolled for the study and were divided between two experimental groups. Dogs of the EXP group were presented with the congruently moving object twice before observing each test condition, while UNEXP dogs were randomly presented with the test stimuli without pre-exposure. The duration of dogs orientation toward the reappearing ball did not differ among test conditions for both UNEXP (F = 0.25, P = 0.78) and EXP dogs (F = 0.46, P = 0.64). However, latency to orient toward the reappearing ball was affected by test condition in both UNEXP (F = 16.7, P < 0.001) and EXP dogs (F = 6.07, P = 0.048), with a shorter latency for delayed re-appearance of the ball compared to congruent condition (EXP: P = 0.24; UNEXP: P < 0.001). The results suggest that dogs are able to predict the future position of an object moving with constant speed regardless of pre-exposure.