Do Emotional Cues Influence the Performance of Domestic Dogs in an Observational Learning Task?

Abstract

Using social information is not indiscriminate and being able to choose what to copy and from whom to copy is critical. Dogs are able to learn socially, to recognize, and respond to dog as well as human emotional expressions, and to make reputation-like inferences based on how people behave towards their owner. Yet, the mechanisms dogs use for obtaining and utilizing social information are still to be fully understood, especially concerning whether emotional cues influence dogs’ social learning. Therefore, our main aim was to test the hypothesis that an emotionally charged (negative, positive, or neutral) interaction with the demonstrator of a “V” detour task prior to testing would affect subjects’ performance, by: (i) changing the value of the information provided by the demonstrator or (ii) changing the valence of the learning environment. Our experimental design consisted of three phases: pre-test (subjects were allowed to solve the task alone); emotional display (dogs watched the unfamiliar human behaving in either a positive, negative or neutral way towards their owner); test (demonstrator showed the task and subjects were allowed to move freely). Only dogs that failed in pre-test were considered for analysis (n = 46). We analyzed four dependent variables: success, time to solve the task, latency to reach the fence and matching the side of demonstration. For each, we used four models (GEEs and GLMMs) to investigate the effect of (1) demographic factors; (2) experimental design factors (including emotional group); (3) behavior of the dog; and (4) side chosen and matching. All models took into account all trials (random effect included) and the first trials only. Our findings corroborate previous studies of social learning, but present no evidence to sustain our hypothesis. We discuss the possibility of our stimuli not being salient enough in a task that involves highly motivating food and relies on long and highly distracting interval between phases. Nevertheless, these results represent an important contribution to the study of dog behavior and social cognition and pave the way for further investigations.

Visual perception of emotion cues in dogs: a critical review of methodologies

“…4 Examples of various experimental setups and equipment that can be used to investigate perception of emotion cues in dogs (pictures selected may not be from studies on perception of emotion cues as they are for illustrative purposes only). Experimental setups from: A Correia-Caeiro et al ( 2020 , 2021 ), B Barber et al ( 2016 ), C Kis et al ( 2017 ), D Ogura et al ( 2020 ), E Faragó et al ( 2010 ), F Lind et al ( 2017 ), G Muller et al ( 2015 ), H Albuquerque et al ( 2021 ). Image 4-B and 4-G courtesy of Ludwig Huber.…”

“…4 -F, touchscreen activation: Fig. 4 -G) or take part effectively in social interactions with live demonstrators (e.g., Albuquerque et al 2021 ; Buttelmann and Tomasello 2013 ; Vas et al 2005 ). While it can be argued that all scenarios are to some extent naturalistic, since dogs not only passively view emotion cues in social partners but also process these cues when interacting with their social partners, there might be a difference in the cognitive processes recruited when additional cognitive and physical processes are accompanying emotion cue perception.…”

“…While both video and static image stimuli may have limitations regarding visual properties (2D, colour use, refresh rate, etc. ), these type of stimuli are easier to control and some of their visual properties can be adapted (e.g., using higher refresh rate), However, in some studies on how dogs perceive emotion cues, real-life human demonstrators have been used to display the stimuli (e.g., facial and vocal expressions in the social referencing paradigm (Merola et al 2012 , 2013 , 2014 ) or its effect on learning tasks (Albuquerque et al 2021 )). Whilst real-life demonstrators might better engage and motivate dogs in the experimental tasks, it also introduces varying degrees of lack of control and thus validity, such as in the difficulty involved in fully blinding demonstrators, in the display of posed cues, in the ability to repeat identical cues between trials, or in what cues exactly dogs are taking from the demonstrators.…”

Dogs can infer implicit information from human emotional expressions

“…social learning, use of public information) to optimise activities (e.g. Albuquerque et al 2021 ; Bugnyar and Heinrich 2005 ; Eschar et al 2016 ; Kendal et al 2009 ). Anticipating others’ behaviour and adjusting one’s own behaviour according to environmental demands to obtain access to resources and increase fitness is cognitively challenging but highly advantageous, and so may affect how animals behave and make decisions (McFarland et al 2013 ).…”