A key social cognitive skill is being able to understand and respond to another’s visual perspective i.e. what another individual can or cannot see. The aim of this thesis was to explore dogs’ visual perspective taking abilities, utilising new paradigms across 4 studies and a range of contexts. The studies presented in chapters 2 and 3 aimed to test if dogs could infer a human’s perception using their own previous experience. The studies adapted the goggles method in a competitive and a cooperative context. In both settings, to be successful (steal (chapter 2) or beg (chapter 3)), the dogs needed to mentalise the perspective of the human. Dogs failed to demonstrate any understanding of the human’s visual perspective, irrespective of the context. The study presented in chapter 4 tested dogs at a lower level of perspective taking. The study used an anticipatory looking paradigm and measured the dogs’ gaze behaviour instead of their overt choices. The participant dogs were presented with a cooperative play context. After an experience stage, the trials presented two toys; both visible to the dog but only one was visible to the human. The dog needed to infer the visual perception of the human and anticipate that they will retrieve the toy visible to both of them. The dogs were successful in this task, providing evidence for perspective taking abilities. Chapter 5 aimed to investigate if there was any correlation between dogs’ inhibitory control and perspective taking. The study used each dog’s results from chapter 4 with their results in an inhibitory control task. We found no correlation between the abilities. Overall, the results of the thesis suggest that dogs are able to perform level 1 perspective taking, but this may be the limit of their skill, as they failed in the more cognitively demanding tasks.
Social Cognitive Skills in Domestic Dogs: Visual Perspective Taking
West-Brownbill, A. E. (Author). 18 Sept 2025
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis