The results of my study indicate that dogs do not understand the meaning of forbiddance. Apparently they can not make the inference from the forbiddance that "she would only prohibit it, if there was something good there". This separates dogs from both children and apes, both of which managed to be successful in a very similar experiment.

On the other hand the dogs successfully used informative cues. This indicates that dogs are specialised in perceiving information from humans but it remains unknown if they actually understand the human intention of transmitting information. Using a theory from child psychology, called pedagogy theory, it could be suggested that dogs might have a cognitive "on switch" for using human communication. This might be things that children also attend to, e.g. high pitched voices, eye contact and use of names. Pedagogy theory does not require that the dog understands the humans intent to inform, but only that the on switch mechanism makes the dog perceive the message of the communication.