Márta Gácsi

Human Analogue Safe Haven Effect of the Owner: Behavioural and Heart Rate Response to Stressful Social Stimuli in Dogs

The secure base and safe haven effects of the attachment figure are central features of the human attachment theory. Recently, conclusive evidence for human analogue attachment behaviours in dogs has been provided, however, the owner’s security-providing role in danger has not been directly supported. We investigated the relationship between the behavioural and cardiac response in dogs (N = 30) while being approached by a threatening stranger in separation vs. in the presence of the owner, presented in a balanced order. Non-invasive telemetric measures of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) data during the threatening approaches was compared to periods before and after the encounters. Dogs that showed distress vocalisation during separation (N = 18) and that growled or barked at the stranger during the threatening approach (N = 17) were defined as behaviourally reactive in the given situation. While characteristic stress vocalisations were emitted during separations, the absence of the owner did not have an effect on dogs’ mean HR, but significantly increased the HRV. The threatening approach increased dogs’ mean HR, with a parallel decrease in the HRV, particularly in dogs that were behaviourally reactive to the encounter. Importantly, the HR increase was significantly less pronounced when dogs faced the stranger in the presence of the owner. Moreover, the test order, whether the dog encountered the stranger first with or without its owner, also proved important: HR increase associated with the encounter in separation seemed to be attenuated in dogs that faced the stranger first in the presence of their owner. We provided evidence for human analogue safe haven effect of the owner in a potentially dangerous situation. Similarly to parents of infants, owners can provide a buffer against stress in dogs, which can even reduce the effect of a subsequent encounter with the same threatening stimuli later when the owner is not present.

Are readers of our face readers of our minds? Dogs (Canis familiaris) show situation-dependent recognition of human's attention.

The ability of animals to use behavioral/facial cues in detection of human attention has been widely investigated. In this test series we studied the ability of dogs to recognize human attention in different experimental situations (ball-fetching game, fetching objects on command, begging from humans). The attentional state of the humans was varied along two variables: (1) facing versus not facing the dog; (2) visible versus non-visible eyes. In the first set of experiments (fetching) the owners were told to take up different body positions (facing or not facing the dog) and to either cover or not cover their eyes with a blindfold. In the second set of experiments (begging) dogs had to choose between two eating humans based on either the visibility of the eyes or direction of the face. Our results show that the efficiency of dogs to discriminate between “attentive” and “inattentive” humans depended on the context of the test, but they could rely on the orientation of the body, the orientation of the head and the visibility of the eyes. With the exception of the fetching-game situation, they brought the object to the front of the human (even if he/she turned his/her back towards the dog), and preferentially begged from the facing (or seeing) human. There were also indications that dogs were sensitive to the visibility of the eyes because they showed increased hesitative behavior when approaching a blindfolded owner, and they also preferred to beg from the person with visible eyes. We conclude that dogs are able to rely on the same set of human facial cues for detection of attention, which form the behavioral basis of understanding attention in humans. Showing the ability of recognizing human attention across different situations dogs proved to be more flexible than chimpanzees investigated in similar circumstances.

Attachment to humans: A comparative study on hand-reared wolves and differently socialized dog puppies

Using the Strange Situation Test originally developed for testing the mother-infant relationship in humans, we compared the attachment behaviour of extensively socialized (hand-reared) dog, Canis familiaris, and wolf, Canis lupus, puppies towards their human caregiver with that of pet dog puppies of the same age. The experiment was designed to study whether (1) dog puppies as young as 16 weeks show attachment to a human caregiver, (2) extensive socialization by human caregivers affects attachment behaviour of dog puppies and (3) evolutionary changes (in the form of species-specific differences between wolf and dog pups) affect the emergence of dog-human attachment. We found a characteristic selective responsiveness to the owner in young dogs, similar to that observed in adults. This finding supports the view that puppies show patterns of attachment towards their owners. Extensive socialization had only a minor effect on the attachment behaviour in dog puppies, as the behaviour of pet dogs and hand-reared dogs was basically similar. However, we found a significant species-specific difference between wolves and dogs: both extensively socialized and pet dog puppies were more responsive to the owner than to an unfamiliar human participant, whereas extensively socialized wolves were not. Behavioural differences could be best explained by assuming that selective processes took place in the course of domestication (genetic changes) that are related to the attachment system of the dog.

Effects of selection for cooperation and attention in dogs

BackgroundIt has been suggested that the functional similarities in the socio-cognitive behaviour of dogs and humans emerged as a consequence of comparable environmental selection pressures. Here we use a novel approach to account for the facilitating effect of domestication in dogs and reveal that selection for two factors under genetic influence (visual cooperation and focused attention) may have led independently to increased comprehension of human communicational cues.MethodIn Study 1, we observed the performance of three groups of dogs in utilizing the human pointing gesture in a two-way object choice test. We compared breeds selected to work while visually separated from human partners (N = 30, 21 breeds, clustered as independent worker group), with those selected to work in close cooperation and continuous visual contact with human partners (N = 30, 22 breeds, clustered as cooperative worker group), and with a group of mongrels (N = 30).Secondly, it has been reported that, in dogs, selective breeding to produce an abnormal shortening of the skull is associated with a more pronounced area centralis (location of greatest visual acuity). In Study 2, breeds with high cephalic index and more frontally placed eyes (brachycephalic breeds, N = 25, 14 breeds) were compared with breeds with low cephalic index and laterally placed eyes (dolichocephalic breeds, N = 25, 14 breeds).ResultsIn Study 1, cooperative workers were significantly more successful in utilizing the human pointing gesture than both the independent workers and the mongrels.In study 2, we found that brachycephalic dogs performed significantly better than dolichocephalic breeds.DiscussionAfter controlling for environmental factors, we have provided evidence that at least two independent phenotypic traits with certain genetic variability affect the ability of dogs to rely on human visual cues. This finding should caution researchers against making simple generalizations about the effects of domestication and on dog-wolf differences in the utilization of human visual signals.

Voice-sensitive regions in the dog and human brain are revealed by comparative fMRI

During the approximately 18-32 thousand years of domestication, dogs and humans have shared a similar social environment. Dog and human vocalizations are thus familiar and relevant to both species, although they belong to evolutionarily distant taxa, as their lineages split approximately 90-100 million years ago. In this first comparative neuroimaging study of a nonprimate and a primate species, we made use of this special combination of shared environment and evolutionary distance. We presented dogs and humans with the same set of vocal and nonvocal stimuli to search for functionally analogous voice-sensitive cortical regions. We demonstrate that voice areas exist in dogs and that they show a similar pattern to anterior temporal voice areas in humans. Our findings also reveal that sensitivity to vocal emotional valence cues engages similarly located nonprimary auditory regions in dogs and humans. Although parallel evolution cannot be excluded, our findings suggest that voice areas may have a more ancient evolutionary origin than previously known.

Comprehension of human pointing gestures in horses (Equus caballus)

Twenty domestic horses (Equus caballus) were tested for their ability to rely on different human gesticular cues in a two-way object choice task. An experimenter hid food under one of two bowls and after baiting, indicated the location of the food to the subjects by using one of four different cues. Horses could locate the hidden reward on the basis of the distal dynamic-sustained, proximal momentary and proximal dynamic-sustained pointing gestures but failed to perform above chance level when the experimenter performed a distal momentary pointing gesture. The results revealed that horses could rely spontaneously on those cues that could have a stimulus or local enhancement effect, but the possible comprehension of the distal momentary pointing remained unclear. The results are discussed with reference to the involvement of various factors such as predisposition to read human visual cues, the effect of domestication and extensive social experience and the nature of the gesture used by the experimenter in comparative investigations.

Chapter 3 The Dog as a Model for Understanding Human Social Behavior

This chapter was originally published in the book Advances in The Study of Behavior, Vol. 39, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the authors benefit and for the benefit of the authors institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who know you, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator.

Distinguishing Logic From Association in the Solution of an Invisible Displacement Task by Children (Homo sapiens) and Dogs (Canis familiaris): Using Negation of Disjunction

Prior research on the ability to solve the Piagetian invisible displacement task has focused on prerequisite representational capacity. This study examines the additional prerequisite of deduction. As in other tasks (e.g., conservation and transitivity), it is difficult to distinguish between behavior that reflects logical inference from behavior that reflects associative generalization. Using the role of negation in logic whereby negative feedback about one belief increases the certainty of another (e.g., a disjunctive syllogism), task-naive dogs (Canis familiaris; n=19) and 4- to 6-year-old children (Homo sapiens; n=24) were given a task wherein a desirable object was shown to have disappeared from a container after it had passed behind 3 separate screens. As predicted, children (as per logic of negated disjunction) tended to increase their speed of checking the 3rd screen after failing to find the object behind the first 2 screens, whereas dogs (as per associative extinction) tended to significantly decrease their speed of checking the 3rd screen after failing to find the object behind the first 2 screens.

Social behaviour of dogs encountering AIBO, an animal-like robot in a neutral and in a feeding situation

The use of animal-like autonomous robots might offer new possibilities in the study of animal interactions, if the subject recognises it as a social partner. In this paper we investigate whether AIBO, a dog-like robot of the Sony Corp. can be used for this purpose. Twenty-four adult and sixteen 4-5 months old pet dogs were tested in two situations where subjects encountered one of four different test-partners: (1) a remote controlled car; (2) an AIBO robot; (3) AIBO with a puppy-scented furry cover; and (4) a 2-month-old puppy. In the neutral situation the dog could interact freely with one of the partners for 1 min in a closed arena in the presence of its owner. In the feeding situation the encounters were started while the dog was eating food. Our results show that age and context influence the social behaviour of dogs. Further, we have found that although both age groups differentiated the living and non-living test-partners for some extent, the furry AIBO evoked significantly increased responses in comparison to the car. These experiments show the first steps towards the application of robots in behavioural studies, notwithstanding that at present AIBOs limited ability to move constrains its effectiveness as social partner for dogs.

On the utilization of social animals as a model for social robotics

Social robotics is a thriving field in building artificial agents. The possibility to construct agents that can engage in meaningful social interaction with humans presents new challenges for engineers. In general, social robotics has been inspired primarily by psychologists with the aim of building human-like robots. Only a small subcategory of “companion robots” (also referred to as robotic pets) was built to mimic animals. In this opinion essay we argue that all social robots should be seen as companions and more conceptual emphasis should be put on the inter-specific interaction between humans and social robots. This view is underlined by the means of an ethological analysis and critical evaluation of present day companion robots. We suggest that human–animal interaction provides a rich source of knowledge for designing social robots that are able to interact with humans under a wide range of conditions.