Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Dogs’ comprehension of referential emotional expressions: familiar people and familiar emotions are easier

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Animal Cognition Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Dogs have been shown to discriminate between human facial expressions, and they seem to use human emotional communication to regulate their behaviour towards an external object/situation. However, it is still not clear (1) whether they just respond to the emotional message received with a corresponding increase/decrease in their level of activation or whether they perceive that the emotional message refers to a specific object, (2) which emotional message they use to modify their behaviour (i.e. whether they are following the positive message or avoiding the negative one) and (3) whether their familiarity with the informant has an effect on the dogs’ behaviour. To address these issues, five groups of dogs were tested in two experiments. The first group observed the owner delivering two different emotional messages (happiness and fear) towards two identical objects hidden behind barriers, and the second group observed the owner delivering the same emotional messages but with no-objects present in the room. The third and the fourth groups observed the owner delivering a happy versus a neutral, and a negative versus a neutral emotional message towards the hidden objects. Finally, the fifth group observed a stranger acting like the owner of the first group. When the owner was acting as the informant, dogs seemed to be capable of distinguishing between a fearful and happy emotional expression and preferentially chose to investigate a box eliciting an expression of happiness rather than of fear or neutrality. Dogs, however, seemed to have greater difficulty in distinguishing between the fearful and neutral emotional messages delivered by the owner and between the happy and fearful expressions delivered by the stranger. Results suggest that dogs have learned to associate their owners’ positive emotional messages to positive outcomes, and hence use their communicative messages to guide their actions. However, negative emotional messages and those delivered by strangers are not as clear to dogs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adachi I, Kuwahata H, Fujita K (2007) Dogs recall their owner’s face upon hearing the owner’s voice. Anim Cogn 10:17–21

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Buttelmann D, Tomasello M (2013) Can domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) use referential emotional expressions to locate hidden food? Anim Cogn 16:137–145. doi:10.1007/s10071-012-0560-4

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • de Rosnay M, Cooper PJ, Tsigaras N, Murray L (2006) Transmission of social anxiety from mother to infant: an experimental study using a social referencing paradigm. Behav Res Ther Engl 44:1164–1165

    Google Scholar 

  • Deputte BL, Doll A (2011) Do dogs understand human facial expressions? J Vet Behav 6:78–79

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feinman S, Lewis M (1983) Social referencing at ten months: a second-order effect of infants responses to strangers. Child Dev 54:878–887

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Feiring C, Lewis M, Starr MD (1984) In direct effects and infants’ reaction to strangers. Dev Psychol 20:485–491

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Field T, Woodson R, Greenberg R, Cohen D (1982) Discrimination and imitation of facial expression by neonates. Science 218:179–181

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fukuzawa M, Mills DS, Cooper JJ (2005) The effect of human command phonetic characteristics on auditory cognition in dogs (Canis familiaris). J Comp Psyc 119:117–120

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hare B, Tomasello M (2005) Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends Cogn Sci 9:439–444

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hare B, Brown M, Williamson C, Tomasello M (2002) The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science 298:1634–1636

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hatfield E, Cacioppo JT, Rapson RL (1993) Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Holm S (1979) A simple sequential rejective multiple test procedure. Scand J Stat 6:65–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Horn L, Range F, Huber L (2012) Dogs’ attention towards humans depends on their relationship, not only in social familiarity. Anim Cogn. doi:10.1007/s10071-012-0584-9

    Google Scholar 

  • Hornik R, Risenhoover N, Gunnar M (1987) The effects of maternal positive, neutral and negative affective communication on infant responses to new toys. Child Dev 58:937–944

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaminski J, Neumann M, Bräuer J, Call J, Tomasello M (2011) Domestic dogs communicate to request and not to inform. Anim Behav 82(4):651–658

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos G, Soproni F, Doka A, Miklósi Á (2009) A comparative approach to dogs (Canis familiaris) and human infants comprehension of various forms of pointing gestures. Anim Cogn 12:621–631

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos G, Gácsi M, Topál J, Miklósi Á (2011) Comprehension and utilisation of pointing gestures and gazing in dog–human communication in relatively complex situations. Anim Cogn 15:201–213

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall-Pescini S, Prato-Previde E, Valsecchi P (2011) Are dogs (Canis familiaris) mislead more by the owners than by the strangers in a food choice task? Anim Cogn 14:137–142

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Merola I, Prato-Previde E, Marshall-Pescini S (2012a) Social referencing in do-owner dyads? Anim Cogn 15:175–185

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Merola I, Prato-Previde E, Marshall-Pescini S (2012b) Dogs’ social referencing towards owners and strangers. PLoS One 7(10):e47653

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Miklósi A, Kubinyi E, Topál J, Gácsi M, Virányi Z, Csányi V (2003) A simple reason for a big difference: wolves do not look back at humans, but dogs do. Curr Biol 13:763–766

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Miklósi Á, Topál J, Csányi V (2004) Comparative social cognition: what can dogs teach us? Anim Behav 67:995–1004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morisaki A, Takaoka A, Fujita K (2009) Are dogs sensitive to the emotional state of humans? J Vet Behav Clin Appl Res 4:49

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moses LJ, Baldwin DA, Rosicky JG, Tidball G (2001) Evidence for referential understanding in the emotions domain at twelve and eighteen months. Child Dev 72:718–735

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mumme DL, Fernald A, Herrera C (1966) Infants’ responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm. Child Dev 67:3219–3237

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nagasawa M, Murai K, Mogi K, Kikusui T (2011) Dogs can discriminate smiling faces from blank expression. Anim Cogn 14:525–533

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson CA (1987) The recognition of facial expressions in the first two years of life: mechanisms of development. Child Dev 58:889–909

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson NL, Russell JA (2011) Preschoolers’ use of dynamical facial, bodily and vocal cues to emotion. J Exp Child Psychol 110:52–61

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pettersson H, Kaminski J, Herrmann E, Tomasello M (2011) Understanding of human communicative motives in domestic dogs. App Anim Behav Sci 133:235–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Racca A, Guo K, Meints K, Mills D (2012) Reading faces: differential lateral gaze bias in processing canine and human facial expressions in dogs and 4-year-old children. PLoS One 7(4):e36076. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Repacholi BM (1998) Infants’ use of attentional cues to identify the referent of another person’s emotional expression. Dev Psychol 34:1017–1025

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Savolainen P, Zhang YP, Luo J, Lundeberg J, Leitner T (2002) Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs. Science 298:1610–1613

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Scheider L, Grassmann S, Kaminski J, Tomasello M (2011) Domestic dogs use contextual information and tone of voice when following a human pointing gesture. PLoS One 6(7):e21676. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021676

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Soproni K, Miklósi Á, Topál J, Csányi V (2001) Comprehension of human communicative signs in pet dogs (Canis familiaris). J Comp Psychol 115:122–126

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Stenberg G, Hagekull B (1997) Social referencing and mood modification in 1 year olds. Infant Behav Dev 20:209–217

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang GD et al (2012) The genomics of selection in dogs and the parallel evolution between dogs and humans. Nat Commun 4:1860. doi:10.1038/ncomms2814

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by funds from the Università di Milano to Sarah Marshall-Pescini and Emanuela Prato-Previde and a doctoral grant from the same University to Isabella Merola. We would like to thank all the owners and their dogs that participated as volunteers. This research complies with the current Italian laws on animal welfare.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sez. di Psicologia, Dipartimento di Fisiopatologia medico-chirurgica e dei Trapianti, Università di Milano, Milan, Italy

    I. Merola, E. Prato-Previde, M. Lazzaroni & S. Marshall-Pescini

Authors
  1. I. Merola
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. E. Prato-Previde
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. M. Lazzaroni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. S. Marshall-Pescini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to I. Merola.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (WMV 140000 kb)

Appendix

Appendix

Experiment 1

2 Akita inu, 1 Basenji, 1 Bichon Frise, 1 Border Collie, 1 Boxer, 2 Epagneul Breton, 1 Cau de agua, 1 Cavalier King Charles, 1 Dobermann, 2 Flat coat retriever, 1 German Shepherd, 5 Golden Retriever, 1 Australian Kelpie, 4 Labrador Retriever, 1 Pinscher, 1 Rhodesian Ridgeback, 2 Setter Irish, 1 Terranova.

Experiment 2

2 Beagle, 1 Bolognese, 1 Border Collie, 1 Italian hound, 1 Breton, 1 Cirneco dell’Etna, 3 Golden Retriever, 4 Jack Russell, 2 Labrador Retriever, 2 Poodle, 1 Pinscher, 1 Rottweiler, 1 West highland terrier.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Merola, I., Prato-Previde, E., Lazzaroni, M. et al. Dogs’ comprehension of referential emotional expressions: familiar people and familiar emotions are easier. Anim Cogn 17, 373–385 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-013-0668-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-013-0668-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation