Novel approach to study the perception of animacy in dogs

Abdai, Judit; Terencio, Cristina Baño; Miklósi, Ádám

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0177010

Cited by 17 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(88 reference statements)

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“…On the other hand, there are several reports on primitive agents like remote control cars eliciting (evoking) dog's perception of interactivity or sociality toward the agent by acting in helpful and complex ways. Some researchers propose the importance of the agent's behavior to evoke dogs' perception of animacy or interactivity toward the agent [1]. In addition, the results in our exploratory experiment casted a new possibility of effective utilizing way of a physical agent with realistic embodiment evoking dog's perception as a "hook" in the first contact to some extent.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Gap between Owner's Perceptions and Dog's Behaviors Toward the Same Physical Agents

Kasuga

Ikeda

2020

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction

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Dogs are often considered as humans' oldest friends. The relationship between people and dogs (wherein they are regarded as family members in the home) is well-studied. Since social agents have recently become a part of family life, a new field of research has been introduced that is centered on the human-agent and dog-agent relationships. Hence, in this study, to investigate how social agents are perceived by dog owners and dogs, we employed existing communication agents such as smart speakers and conducted two experiments; the first one investigated dog owners' impression toward the agents in agent-owner interaction and the second one investigated dog's behavior in front of the agents during owner's speaking to the agents and the agents' speaking to the dogs. Furthermore, we statistically analyzed the results of thirty-three dog-owners and twenty-one dogs. The results obtained from the GODSPEED questionnaire analysis indicate that regarding aspects such as anthropomorphism, animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence, the dog-like smart speaker is significantly worse than the educational humanoid robots NAO and Pepper. Regarding aspects such as animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence, the dog-like smart speaker has a significantly lower rating than Google Home, and it has a lower rating than Pepper with respect to perceived safety. However, in the case of canine behavioral analysis, the percentage of individuals who engaged in social behaviors (such as sniffing the rear) in response to the dog-like smart speaker is found to be significantly higher than that for the other agents. Hence, although this study is an exploratory experiment in terms of subject limitations and determination of behavioral indicators, it is the first step towards bridging the gap between owners' and dogs' perceptions of an agent's sociality while employing the same physical agents. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; Empirical studies in interaction design; HCI design and evaluation methods.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Gap between Owner's Perceptions and Dog's Behaviors Toward the Same Physical Agents

Kasuga

Ikeda

2020

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction

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“…In previous studies, we found that dogs, similarly to humans, perceive inanimate objects as animate based simply on their motion 8 , 9 , 20 , but species differences were also detected 9 . In two studies, we displayed to dogs simultaneously a chasing and independent motion side-by-side on a screen using geometric figures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Selection for specific behavioural traits does not influence preference of chasing motion and visual strategy in dogs

Abdai

Miklósi

2022

Sci Rep

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Perception of inanimate objects as animate based on motion cues alone seems to be present in phylogenetically distant species, from birth (humans and chicks). However, we do not know whether the species’ social and ecological environment has an influence on this phenomenon. Dogs serve as a unique species to investigate whether selection for specific behavioural traits influences animacy perception. We tested purebred companion dogs, and assigned them into two groups based on the type of work they were originally selected for: (1) Chasers, tracking and chasing prey; (2) Retrievers, mark and remember downed game. We displayed isosceles triangles presenting a chasing pattern vs moving independently, in parallel on a screen. We hypothesised that Chasers prefer to look at chasing and Retrievers eventually focus their visual attention on the independent motion. Overall, we did not find a significant difference between groups regarding the looking duration of dogs or the frequency of their gaze alternation between the chasing and independent motions. Thus it seems that selection for specific traits does not influence the perception of animate entities within the species.

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“…In another study, dogs interacted more often with objects that displayed a dependent movement pattern (resembling a chasing event) than with independently moving objects 17 . In a related looking time study, dogs lost interest sooner in geometric shapes with a dependent (chasing-like) movement pattern than in shapes with an independent movement pattern 18 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Ishikawa and colleagues 16 only found increased looking times for a human point-light walker in frontal view but not in lateral view compared to inverted control stimuli. Eatherington and colleagues 15 In another study, dogs interacted more often with objects that displayed a dependent movement pattern (resembling a chasing event) than with independently moving objects 17 . In a related looking time study, dogs lost interest sooner in geometric shapes with a dependent (chasing-like) movement pattern than in shapes with an independent movement pattern 18 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dogs accurately track a moving object on a screen and anticipate its destination

Völter

Karl

Huber

2020

Sci Rep

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The prediction of upcoming events is of importance not only to humans and non-human primates but also to other animals that live in complex environments with lurking threats or moving prey. In this study, we examined motion tracking and anticipatory looking in dogs in two eye-tracking experiments. In Experiment 1, we presented pet dogs (N = 14) with a video depicting how two players threw a Frisbee back and forth multiple times. The horizontal movement of the Frisbee explained a substantial amount of variance of the dogs’ horizontal eye movements. With increasing duration of the video, the dogs looked at the catcher before the Frisbee arrived. In Experiment 2, we showed the dogs (N = 12) the same video recording. This time, however, we froze and rewound parts of the video to examine how the dogs would react to surprising events (i.e., the Frisbee hovering in midair and reversing its direction). The Frisbee again captured the dogs’ attention, particularly when the video was frozen and rewound for the first time. Additionally, the dogs looked faster at the catcher when the video moved forward compared to when it was rewound. We conclude that motion tracking and anticipatory looking paradigms provide promising tools for future cognitive research with canids.

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Novel approach to study the perception of animacy in dogs

Cited by 17 publications

References 28 publications

Gap between Owner's Perceptions and Dog's Behaviors Toward the Same Physical Agents

Gap between Owner's Perceptions and Dog's Behaviors Toward the Same Physical Agents

Selection for specific behavioural traits does not influence preference of chasing motion and visual strategy in dogs

Dogs accurately track a moving object on a screen and anticipate its destination

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