Nicole R. Dorey is a post-doctoral fellow working with Dr. Wynne in the Canine Cognition and Behavior Laboratory. Nicole received her undergraduate degree in zoology and psychology from the University of Florida. After graduating she obtained her masters and went to England where she received her Ph.D. in Animal Behaviour from the University of Exeter. Although she loved the opportunity to travel the world, she is very happy to be back where her academic life started. Since arriving at UF she has designed and taught a number of courses, including a special topics course in Animal Cognition.

Following is an excerpt from one of Nicole’s latest research projects here at the University of Florida.

Over the last decade researchers have found that domestic dogs possess an exquisite sensitivity to a variety of human gestures, including pointing with the hand and arm. This ability is very simple to test: an experimenter stands between two containers and points at one of them while another experimenter holds a dog about six feet away. The dog is then released to make its choice.

Our latest study addressed the age at which dogs first show this sensitivity to human gestures. Other investigators had claimed that puppies as young as six weeks of age were able to follow human points. These researchers argued that pups do not need experience around humans to be able to follow human points – they are born with an instinctive understanding of the implications of human gestures. Our study found on the contrary that puppies show little ability to follow human points until around 21 weeks of age. The number of individual subjects performing at above chance levels increased from zero at 9-16 weeks of age, to two of eight subjects in the 17–20 week age group and six of nine subjects in the 21–24 week age group.

These results clearly demonstrate that it takes time (and we believe experience around people) for dogs to learn to follow human pointing gestures. This should not come as a surprise: humans are not born able to follow each other’s pointing gestures. It is not until the first year of a baby’s life that they reliably start to follow an adults’ point to a target object.