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Dive into the research topics where Judit Abdai is active.

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Featured researches published by Judit Abdai.


PLOS ONE | 2015

An investigation on social representations: Inanimate agent can mislead dogs (Canis familiaris) in a food choice task

Judit Abdai; Anna Gergely; Eszter Petró; József Topál; Ádám Miklósi

The nature of mental representation of others plays a crucial role in social interactions. Dogs present an ideal model species for the investigation of such mental representations because they develop social ties with both conspecifics and heterospecifics. Former studies found that dogs’ preference for larger food quantity could be reversed by humans who indicate the smaller quantity. The question is whether this social bias is restricted to human partners. We suggest that after a short positive social experience, an unfamiliar moving inanimate agent (UMO) can also change dogs’ choice between two food quantities. We tested four groups of dogs with different partners: In the (1) Helper UMO and (2) Helper UMO Control groups the partner was an interactive remote control car that helped the dog to obtain an otherwise unreachable food. In the (3) Non-helper UMO and (4) Human partner groups dogs had restricted interaction with the remote control car and the unfamiliar human partners. In the Human partner, Helper UMO and Helper UMO Control groups the partners were able to revert dogs’ choice for the small amount by indicating the small one, but the Non-helper UMO was not. We suggest that dogs are able to generalize their wide range of experiences with humans to another type of agent as well, based on the recognition of similarities in simple behavioural patterns.


Animal Cognition | 2016

Dogs (Canis familiaris) adjust their social behaviour to the differential role of inanimate interactive agents

Eszter Petró; Judit Abdai; Anna Gergely; József Topál; Ádám Miklósi

Dogs are able to flexibly adjust their social behaviour to situation-specific characteristics of their human partner’s behaviour in problem situations. However, dogs do not necessarily detect the specific role played by the human in a particular situation: they may form expectations about their partners’ behaviour based on previous experiences with them. Utilising inanimate objects (UMO—unidentified moving object) as interacting agents offers new possibilities for investigating social behaviour, because in this way we can remove or control the influence of previous experience with the partner. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether dogs are able to recognise the different roles of two UMOs and are able to adjust their communicative behaviour towards them. In the learning phase of the experiment, dogs were presented with a two-way food-retrieval problem in which two UMOs, which differed in their physical appearance and abilities, helped the dog obtain a piece of food in their own particular manner. After a short experience with both UMOs, dogs in the test phase faced one of the problems in the presence of both inanimate agents. Overall, dogs displayed similar levels of gazing behaviour towards the UMOs, but in the first test they looked, approached and touched the relevant partner first. This rapid adjustment of social behaviour towards UMOs suggests that dogs may generalise their experiences with humans to unfamiliar agents and are able to select the appropriate partner when facing a problem situation.


Frontiers in Psychology | 2016

The origin of social evaluation, social eavesdropping, reputation formation, image scoring or what you will

Judit Abdai; Ádám Miklósi

Social evaluation is a mental process that leverages the preference toward prosocial partners (positivity bias) against the avoidance of antisocial individuals (negativity bias) in a cooperative context. The phenomenon is well-known in humans, and recently comparative investigations looked at the possible evolutionary origins. So far social evaluation has been investigated mainly in non-human and human primates and dogs, however, there are few data on the presence of negativity/positivity bias in client-cleaner reef fish interactions as well. Unfortunately, the comparative approach to social evaluation is hindered by conceptual and procedural differences in experimental studies. By reviewing current knowledge on social evaluation in different species, we aim to point out that the capacity for social evaluation is not restricted to humans alone; however, its building blocks (negativity and positivity bias) may be more widespread separately. Due to its importance in survival, negativity bias likely to be widespread among animals; however, there has been less intensive selective pressure for the identification of prosocial companions, thus the latter ability may have emerged only in certain social species. We present a general framework and argue that negativity and positivity bias evolve independently and can be considered as social evaluation only if a unified behavior and cognitive system deals with both biases in concert.


Scientific Reports | 2018

Investigating jealous behaviour in dogs

Judit Abdai; Cristina Baño Terencio; Paula Pérez Fraga; Ádám Miklósi

The function of jealous behaviour is to facilitate the maintenance of an important social relationship that is threatened by a third-party, a rival individual. Although jealous behaviour has an important function in gregarious species, it has been investigated almost exclusively in humans. Based on functional similarity between dog-owner and mother-infant attachments, we hypothesised that jealous behaviour can be evoked in dogs, similarly to children. In our study owners focused their attention solely on the test partner, while they ignored their dog. We deployed familiar and unfamiliar dogs as social test partners, and familiar and unfamiliar objects as non-social test partners; all subjects encountered all test partners. Dogs showed more jealous behaviour, i.e. owner-oriented behaviour and attempts to separate the owner and test partner in case of social compared to non-social test partners. Results suggest that jealous behaviour emerges in dogs, and it is functionally similar to that in children observed in similar situations. Alternative explanations like territoriality, dominance rank can be excluded.


Biology Letters | 2017

Perception of animacy in dogs and humans

Judit Abdai; Bence Ferdinandy; Cristina Baño Terencio; Ákos Pogány; Ádám Miklósi

Humans have a tendency to perceive inanimate objects as animate based on simple motion cues. Although animacy is considered as a complex cognitive property, this recognition seems to be spontaneous. Researchers have found that young human infants discriminate between dependent and independent movement patterns. However, quick visual perception of animate entities may be crucial to non-human species as well. Based on general mammalian homology, dogs may possess similar skills to humans. Here, we investigated whether dogs and humans discriminate similarly between dependent and independent motion patterns performed by geometric shapes. We projected a side-by-side video display of the two patterns and measured looking times towards each side, in two trials. We found that in Trial 1, both dogs and humans were equally interested in the two patterns, but in Trial 2 of both species, looking times towards the dependent pattern decreased, whereas they increased towards the independent pattern. We argue that dogs and humans spontaneously recognized the specific pattern and habituated to it rapidly, but continued to show interest in the ‘puzzling’ pattern. This suggests that both species tend to recognize inanimate agents as animate relying solely on their motions.


PLOS ONE | 2017

Novel approach to study the perception of animacy in dogs

Judit Abdai; Cristina Baño Terencio; Ádám Miklósi; Lesley J. Rogers

Humans tend to perceive inanimate objects as animate based on simple motion cues. So far this perceptual bias has been studied mostly in humans by utilizing two-dimensional video and interactive displays. Considering its importance for survival, the perception of animacy is probably also widespread among animals, however two-dimensional displays are not necessarily the best approach to study the phenomenon in non-human species. Here we applied a novel method to study whether dogs recognize a dependent (chasing-like) movement pattern performed by inanimate agents in live demonstration. We found that dogs showed more interest toward the agents that demonstrated the chasing-like motion, compared to those that were involved in the independent movement. We suggest that dogs spontaneously recognized the chasing-like pattern and thus they may have considered the interacting partners as animate agents. This methodological approach may be useful to test perceptual animacy in other non-human species.


Animal Behaviour | 2015

Dogs rapidly develop socially competent behaviour while interacting with a contingently responding self-propelled object

Anna Gergely; Judit Abdai; Eszter Petró; András Kosztolányi; József Topál; Ádám Miklósi


Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences | 2017

Sleep macrostructure is modulated by positive and negative social experience in adult pet dogs

Anna Kis; Anna Gergely; Ágoston Galambos; Judit Abdai; Ferenc Gombos; Róbert Bódizs; József Topál


Animal Sentience | 2018

Displaying jealous behavior versus experiencing jealousy

Judit Abdai; Ádám Miklósi


Archive | 2017

Supplementary material from "Sleep macrostructure is modulated by positive and negative social experience in adult pet dogs"

Anna Kis; Anna Gergely; Ágoston Galambos; Judit Abdai; Ferenc Gombos; Róbert Bódizs; József Topál

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Ádám Miklósi

Eötvös Loránd University

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Anna Gergely

Eötvös Loránd University

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József Topál

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

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Eszter Petró

Eötvös Loránd University

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Anna Kis

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

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Bence Ferdinandy

Eötvös Loránd University

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Ferenc Gombos

Pázmány Péter Catholic University

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Ágoston Galambos

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

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