Anna Gergely

What Are You or Who Are You? The Emergence of Social Interaction between Dog and an Unidentified Moving Object (UMO)

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.

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

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.

A simple but powerful test of perseverative search in dogs and toddlers

Perseverative (A-not-B) errors during the search of a hidden object were recently described in both dogs and 10-month-old infants. It was found that ostensive cues indicating a communicative intent of the person who hides the object played a major role in eliciting perseverative errors in both species. However, the employed experimental set-up gave rise to several alternative explanations regarding the source of these errors. Here we present a simplified protocol that eliminates the ambiguities present in the original design. Using five consecutive object hiding events to one of two locations in a fixed order (“AABBA”), we tested adult companion dogs and human children (24 months old). The experimenter performed the hiding actions while giving ostensive cues in each trial and moved the target object to the given location in a straight line. Our results show that in the B trials, both 24-month-old children and dogs could not reliably find the hidden object, and their performance in the first B trials was significantly below that of any of the A trials. These results are the first to show that the tendency for perseverative errors in an ostensive-communicative context is a robust phenomenon among 2-year-old children and dogs, and not the by-product of a topographically elaborate hiding event.

Social interaction with an “unidentified moving object” elicits A-not-B error in domestic dogs

Mechanical “unidentified moving objects” (UMO’s) are useful for controlled investigations into features of social interaction that generate cooperativeness and positive social affiliation in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). We hypothesized that, if a UMO interacted socially with a dog, the UMO would become associated with certain social cues and would subsequently affect dog behaviour. We assigned dogs to a Human, Social UMO or Non-Social UMO partner. In the Human and Social UMO conditions, the partner interacted with the dog cooperatively whereas the Non-Social UMO partner was unresponsive to the dog’s actions. We then tested dogs with their partner in a Piagetian A-not-B error paradigm, predicting that the Human and Social UMO partners would be more likely to elicit A-not-B errors in dogs than the Non-Social UMO partner. Five trials were conducted in which the dog watched its partner hide a ball behind one of two screens (A or B). As predicted, dogs in the Human and Social UMO conditions were more likely to search for the ball behind the A screen during B trials than dogs in the Non-Social UMO condition. These results reveal that the unfamiliar partner’s social responsiveness leads rapidly to accepting information communicated by the partner. This study has generated a better understanding of crucial features of agents that promote dog social behaviour, which will facilitate the programming of robots for various cooperative tasks.

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

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.

Differential effects of speech situations on mothers’ and fathers’ infant-directed and dog-directed speech: An acoustic analysis

There is growing evidence that dog-directed and infant-directed speech have similar acoustic characteristics, like high overall pitch, wide pitch range, and attention-getting devices. However, it is still unclear whether dog- and infant-directed speech have gender or context-dependent acoustic features. In the present study, we collected comparable infant-, dog-, and adult directed speech samples (IDS, DDS, and ADS) in four different speech situations (Storytelling, Task solving, Teaching, and Fixed sentences situations); we obtained the samples from parents whose infants were younger than 30 months of age and also had pet dog at home. We found that ADS was different from IDS and DDS, independently of the speakers’ gender and the given situation. Higher overall pitch in DDS than in IDS during free situations was also found. Our results show that both parents hyperarticulate their vowels when talking to children but not when addressing dogs: this result is consistent with the goal of hyperspeech in language tutoring. Mothers, however, exaggerate their vowels for their infants under 18 months more than fathers do. Our findings suggest that IDS and DDS have context-dependent features and support the notion that people adapt their prosodic features to the acoustic preferences and emotional needs of their audience.

Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability during Sleep in Family Dogs (Canis familiaris). Moderate Effect of Pre-Sleep Emotions

Simple Summary It is common knowledge that negative emotions in humans are accompanied by both impaired subjective experience as well as maladaptive changes in behavior and physiology. The present paper investigates heart rate—one of the most commonly used emotion-related physiology measures—in the family dog, with the aim of uncovering its potential relationship with emotions. Sleep recordings were conducted following a positive versus a negative social interaction, as sleep alternations are one of the most conspicuous changes in response to negative affect. We observed differences in heart rate following the positive versus negative interactions, however these were only apparent during wakefulness, but not during sleep. Abstract The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) has been shown to both excel in recognising human emotions and produce emotion-related vocalisations and postures that humans can easily recognise. However, little is known about the effect of emotional experiences on subsequent sleep physiology, a set of phenomena heavily interrelated with emotions in the case of humans. The present paper examines heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) during dogs’ sleep, measures that are influenced by both positive and negative emotions in awake dogs. In Study I, descriptive HR and HRV data is provided on N = 12 dogs about the different sleep stages (wake, drowsiness, non-rapid eye movement (non-REM), REM; scoring based on electroencephalogram (EEG) data). We conclude that wakefulness is characterised by higher HR and lower HRV compared to all sleep stages. Furthermore, drowsiness is characterised by higher HR and lower HRV than non-REM and REM, but only if the electrocardiogram (ECG) samples are taken from the first occurrence of a given sleep stage, not when the longest periods of each sleep stage are analysed. Non-REM and REM sleep were not found to be different from each other in either HR or HRV parameters. In Study II, sleep HR and HRV measures are compared in N = 16 dogs after a positive versus negative social interaction (within-subject design). The positive social interaction consisted of petting and ball play, while the negative social interaction was a mixture of separation, threatening approach and still face test. Results are consistent with the two-dimensional emotion hypothesis in that following the intense positive interaction more elevated HR and decreased HRV is found compared to the mildly negative (lower intensity) interaction. However, although this trend can be observed in all sleep stages except for REM, the results only reach significance in the wake stage. In sum, the present findings suggest that HR and HRV are possible to measure during dogs’ sleep, and can potentially be used to study the effect of emotions not only during but also after such interactions.