The importance of gestural communication: a study of human–dog communication using incongruent information

Abstract

We assessed how water rescue dogs, which were equally accustomed to respond to gestural and verbal requests, weighted gestural versus verbal information when asked by their owner to perform an action. Dogs were asked to perform four different actions ("sit", "lie down", "stay", "come") providing them with a single source of information (in Phase 1, gestural, and in Phase 2, verbal) or with incongruent information (in Phase 3, gestural and verbal commands referred to two different actions). In Phases 1 and 2, we recorded the frequency of correct responses as 0 or 1, whereas in Phase 3, we computed a 'preference index' (percentage of gestural commands followed over the total commands responded). Results showed that dogs followed gestures significantly better than words when these two types of information were used separately. Females were more likely to respond to gestural than verbal commands and males responded to verbal commands significantly better than females. In the incongruent condition, when gestures and words simultaneously indicated two different actions, the dogs overall preferred to execute the action required by the gesture rather than that required verbally, except when the verbal command "come" was paired with the gestural command "stay" with the owner moving away from the dog. Our data suggest that in dogs accustomed to respond to both gestural and verbal requests, gestures are more salient than words. However, dogs' responses appeared to be dependent also on the contextual situation: dogs' motivation to maintain proximity with an owner who was moving away could have led them to make the more 'convenient' choices between the two incongruent instructions.

Behavioral and Perceptual Differences between Sexes in Dogs: An Overview

“…Female dogs also seem to rely more on visual signals than males in their behavioral regulation. A study that aimed to assess the preferred communicative channel between verbal and gestural messages underlined a preference for visual cues in dogs [ 26 ]. A group of Labrador and Golden Retrievers, after acclimatization to four common actions (i.e., sit, down, stay, and come) using bimodal gestural and verbal messages, were subjected to three different conditions.…”

“…They are responsive to both verbal and non-verbal vocal sounds [ 22 ] and can recognize up to several hundred words [ 23 , 24 ], with specific neural mechanisms that analyze and integrate word meaning and intonation [ 25 ]. They have also evolved an acute sensitivity to human gestures [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. Moreover, it has recently been demonstrated that dogs are able to perceive human emotions via chemosignals, which suggests a type of olfactory communication [ 31 , 32 ].…”

Human facial expression affects a dog’s response to conflicting directional gestural cues

“…Furthermore, dogs show different sensitivities to conflicting directional gestural cues given concurrently. They tend to follow visual gestural cues more reliably than verbal cues (D'Aniello et al, 2016), and their responses to visual cues are less dependent on signal-giver familiarity (Scandurra et al, 2017). Among the different types of visual directional gestural cues, pointing is more reliably responded to than glancing or gazing (Miklósi et al, 1998).…”

Fast neural learning in dogs: A multimodal sensory fMRI study

“…On the other hand, dogs have superior hearing to humans and readily form visual associations – even being able to discriminate human facial expressions 2 – 4 . The experimental literature has shown that dogs can learn associations to almost any stimulus, but demonstrating that certain modalities are innately preferred over others has been difficult 5 . Apart from the basic question of how different sensory modalities impact associative learning in dogs, the answer could affect how dogs are trained in an optimal manner.…”