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Abstract In line with other research, Udell, Dorey, and Wynne's (in press) finding that dogs and wolves pass on some trials of a putative theory-of-mind test and fail on others is as informative about the methods and concepts of the research as about the subjects. This commentary expands on these points. The intertrial differences in the target article demonstrate how critical the choice of cues is in experimental design; the intersubject-group differences demonstrate how life histories can interact with experimental design. Even the best-designed theory-of-mind tests have intractable logical problems. Finally, these and previous research results call for the introduction of an intermediate stage of ability, a rudimentary theory of mind, to describe subjects' performance.
Keywords Comparative cognition . Theory of mind . Domestic dog . Attention . Cognitive ethology. Social learning
Why test for theory of mind in nonhuman animals? Conceptually, the interest is comparative: Do any animals behave in a way that suggests that they are, like humans, aware that other creatures have minds just as they do? Experimentally, research looks for evidence that an animal can predict the behavior of others (Premack & Woodruff, 1978) or can attribute mental states, particularly desire or knowledge, to others (Carruthers & Smith, 1996; Heyes, 1998).
The many tests for theory of mind in humans are linguistic in form and are passed by normally developing children by around age three. By contrast, a definitive test for theory of mind in non-language-using animals has been elusive, and no animal has been uniformly successful at those that exist. For instance, Call, Hare, and Tomasello (1998) found that no chimpanzee was able to follow a human's gaze, and Povinelli and Eddy (1996) found that chimpanzees were unable to use eye information. However, Hare, Call, Agnetta, and Tomasello (2000) found that chimpanzees used gaze of conspecifics to get information about whether food was accessible.
Adding to this literature, Udell, Dorey, and Wynne (in press) report that canids-hand-raised wolves, pet domestic dogs, and nonpet domestic dogs-perform equivocally on one putative theory-of-mind test. In this target article, Udell et al. (in press) used a begging paradigm, a so-called perspective-taking task originated by Povinelli and Eddy (1996). Each subject group passed the test in at least one design (back turned/facing forward), but...