When facing an unfamiliar person, pet dogs present social referencing based on their owners' direction of movement alone (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dogs' Social Referencing towards Owners and Strangers
PLoS ONE, 2012
Social referencing is a process whereby an individual uses the emotional information provided by an informant about a novel object/stimulus to guide his/her own future behaviour towards it. In this study adult dogs were tested in a social referencing paradigm involving a potentially scary object with either their owner or a stranger acting as the informant and delivering either a positive or negative emotional message. The aim was to evaluate the influence of the informant's identity on the dogs' referential looking behaviour and behavioural regulation when the message was delivered using only vocal and facial emotional expressions. Results show that most dogs looked referentially at the informant, regardless of his/her identity. Furthermore, when the owner acted as the informant dogs that received a positive emotional message changed their behaviour, looking at him/her more often and spending more time approaching the object and close to it; conversely, dogs that were given a negative message took longer to approach the object and to interact with it. Fewer differences in the dog's behaviour emerged when the informant was the stranger, suggesting that the dog-informant relationship may influence the dog's behavioural regulation. Results are discussed in relation to studies on human-dog communication, attachment, mood modification and joint attention.
Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2005
Responsiveness of adult pet dogs (Canis familiaris) to an unfamiliar human was observed in two studies. Subjects were faced with an approaching woman (Stranger) who showed definite signs of friendliness and threat during alternate approaches. Observations consisted of two episodes: the Stranger either approached the dog in normal speed of walk while talking to it and finally petted it gently (Friendly approach episode) or she moved slowly and haltingly and looked steadily into the eyes of the dog without any verbal communication (Threatening approach episode).
Presence and lasting effect of social referencing in dog puppies
Social referencing is the process by which individuals utilize cues from emotional displays of a social partner to form their response to a new situation. Social referencing can provide advantages, especially to young, inexperienced individuals, by favouring an appropriate reaction to novel situations while avoiding the risks of trial and error learning. While there is evidence for social referencing from humans in adult dogs, Canis familiaris, the ontogeny of this behaviour has not been investigated. Moreover, it is not known whether dogs acquire some information during such interactions and recall it later, when encountering a similar situation. We tested 8-week-old companion dog puppies (N ¼ 48) of various breeds by exposing them to a novel stimulus in the presence of human or conspecific social partners. With humans, we tested the effect of different emotional signals expressed by the informant. With conspecifics, we tested whether the presence of the subject's mother or an unfamiliar dog affected behaviour towards the stimulus. Puppies alternated their gaze between the stimulus and the social partner (referential looking) with all the partners. Puppies tested in the presence of a human expressing positive emotional signals towards the stimulus were more likely to approach it than puppies tested with a human expressing neutral emotional signals (behavioural regulation). Importantly, this effect was still apparent after a delay of 1 h, when puppies were tested alone. Puppies tested in the presence of their mother were more likely to approach the stimulus than puppies tested alone or with an unfamiliar dog. The results of this study show that the ability for social referencing develops early in the ontogeny of companion dogs as it is already present at 8 weeks. The valence of the emotional cues provided by a human social partner and the presence of the mother affect the behaviour of puppies exposed to novel situations, even after a delay.
PLoS ONE, 2013
Robots offer new possibilities for investigating animal social behaviour. This method enhances controllability and reproducibility of experimental techniques, and it allows also the experimental separation of the effects of bodily appearance (embodiment) and behaviour. In the present study we examined dogs' interactive behaviour in a problem solving task (in which the dog has no access to the food) with three different social partners, two of which were robots and the third a human behaving in a robot-like manner. The Mechanical UMO (Unidentified Moving Object) and the Mechanical Human differed only in their embodiment, but showed similar behaviour toward the dog. In contrast, the Social UMO was interactive, showed contingent responsiveness and goal-directed behaviour and moved along varied routes. The dogs showed shorter looking and touching duration, but increased gaze alternation toward the Mechanical Human than to the Mechanical UMO. This suggests that dogs' interactive behaviour may have been affected by previous experience with typical humans. We found that dogs also looked longer and showed more gaze alternations between the food and the Social UMO compared to the Mechanical UMO. These results suggest that dogs form expectations about an unfamiliar moving object within a short period of time and they recognise some social aspects of UMOs' behaviour. This is the first evidence that interactive behaviour of a robot is important for evoking dogs' social responsiveness.
Selective attention to humans in companion dogs, Canis familiaris
Animal Behaviour, 2010
Canis familiaris dog dog ageing dogehuman relationship social attention Integration into human societies requires dogs to express adaptable social attitudes, involving high levels of attention to other individuals. In the present study, we developed a new behavioural test, to characterize selective attention towards humans. In the task, the dogs were exposed to the owner and an unfamiliar person, repeatedly entering the experimental room and leaving through different doors; at the end of the sequence the dogs were allowed to approach the doors. Attention was measured as the average length of gaze bouts and as the overall duration of visual orientation towards the different targets. Dogs gave preferential attention to the owner, who received longer gaze bouts and greater overall attention than the stranger. The preference was confirmed by the significant proportion of dogs that directed attention to the owner's door at the end of the task. A modified version of the task was employed to measure dogs' attention when the person's head was not visible. This condition caused a decrease in attention parameters towards the owner. To determine the effects of old age on attention, the two tasks were then administered to dogs aged 7 years and older. Compared to adults, aged dogs showed lower owner-directed attention when the owner was not in sight and were more likely not to move at the end of the task. The results provide the first evidence that dogs' interspecific attention depends on the nature of the dogehuman relationship, on the availability of some distinctive features of the social stimulus and on the age of the dog. Ó
Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2018
Dogs are known to excel in interspecific communication with humans and both communicate with humans and follow human communicative cues. Two tests commonly used to test these skills are, firstly, the problem-solving paradigm, and, secondly, following human referential signals, for example pointing. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether dogs that seek more human contact in an unsolvable problem-solving paradigm also better understand human communicative cues in a pointing test. We also assessed between-and within-breed variation in both tests. 167 dogs were tested and were of the breeds German shepherd dog and Labrador retriever. The Labradors were separated into the two selection lines: common type (bred for show and pet) and field type (bred for hunting). A principal component analysis of behaviours during the problem solving revealed four components: Passivity, Experimenter Contact, Owner Contact and Eye Contact. We analysed the effect of these components on success rate in the pointing test and we found no effect for three of them, while a negative correlation was found for Owner Contact (F (1,147) = 6.892; P = 0.010). This was only present in common-typed Labradors. We conclude that the ability to follow a pointing cue does not predict the propensity for humandirected social behaviour in a problem-solving situation and suggest that the two tests measure different aspects of human-directed social behaviour in dogs.
Animal Cognition, 2015
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 can form expectations about their partners' behaviour based on previous experiences with them. Utilizing inanimate objects (UMO-Unidentified Moving Object) as interacting agents offer 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 recognize the different roles of two UMOs and are able to adjust their communicative behaviour toward 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 with one of the problems in the presence of both inanimate partners. Overall, dogs displayed similar levels of gazing behaviour toward the UMOs but in the first test they looked, approached and touched the relevant partner first. This rapid adjustment of social behaviour toward UMOs suggests that dogs may generalize their experiences with humans to other unfamiliar agents, and are able to select the appropriate partner when facing a problem situation.
Domestic dogs are sensitive to a human's perspective
Behaviour, 2009
We investigated dogs' ability to take the visual perspective of humans. In the main study, each of two toys was placed on the dog's side of two small barriers (one opaque, one transparent). In experimental conditions, a human sat on the opposite side of the barriers, such that she could see only the toy behind the transparent barrier. The experimenter then told the dog to 'Bring it here!' (without designating either toy in any way). In the Back Turned control E also sat on the opposite side but with her back turned so that she could see neither toy, and in the Same Side control she sat on the same side as the dog such that she could see both toys. When toys were differentiable dogs approached the toy behind the transparent barrier in experimental as compared to back turned and same side condition. Dogs did not differentiate between the two control conditions. In a second study dogs were not sensitive to what a human had or had not seen in the immediate past. These results suggest that, even in the absence of overt behavioural cues, dogs are sensitive to others visual access, even if that differs from their own.
Learning & Behavior
This study investigates whether dogs are able to differentiate between people according to whether or not they show similarities to their owners. We hypothesized that dogs would show a preference for the Bsimilar^partner when interacting with unfamiliar humans. After having familiarized with two experimenters displaying different degrees of similarity to their owners, dogs (N = 36) participated in a situation where the desired toy object was made inaccessible in order to find out whether they initiate interaction with the two partners differently. Two different types of Bsimilarity cues^were used (either alone or combined with each other): (1) persistent behavioral characteristics (i.e., familiar vs. strange motion pattern and language usage) and (2) an unfamiliar arbitrary group marker (i.e., one of the potential helpers was wearing clothing similar to that worn by the owner). Results show that although dogs payed equal attention to the human partners displaying various types of similarity to their owners during familiarization, they exhibited a visual attention preference for the human whose motion pattern and language usage were similar to their owner's in the inaccessible-toy task. However, there was weak evidence of discrimination based on the arbitrary group marker (clothing). Although dogs' different tendencies to interact with the potential helpers do not necessarily imply an underlying ability to create social categories based on the degree of similarity between the owner and unfamiliar people, these results suggest that functionally human infant-analogue forms of social categorization may have emerged in dogs.