Comparison of dogs and humans in visual scanning of social interaction

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated similarities in gazing behaviour of dogs and humans, but comparisons under similar conditions are rare, and little is known about dogs' visual attention to social scenes. Here, we recorded the eye gaze of dogs while they viewed images containing two humans or dogs either interacting socially or facing away: the results were compared with equivalent data measured from humans. Furthermore, we compared the gazing behaviour of two dog and two human populations with different social experiences: family and kennel dogs; dog experts and non-experts. Dogs' gazing behaviour was similar to humans: both species gazed longer at the actors in social interaction than in non-social images. However, humans gazed longer at the actors in dog than human social interaction images, whereas dogs gazed longer at the actors in human than dog social interaction images. Both species also made more saccades between actors in images representing non-conspecifics, which could indicate that processing social interaction of non-conspecifics may be more demanding. Dog experts and non-experts viewed the images very similarly. Kennel dogs viewed images less than family dogs, but otherwise their gazing behaviour did not differ, indicating that the basic processing of social stimuli remains similar regardless of social experiences.

Perception of dynamic facial expressions of emotion between dogs and humans

“…Only three studies to date have compared human and dog perception of own vs other species (Guo et al 2009;Racca et al 2012;Törnqvist et al 2015); all support our results of a lower PVT for all stimuli by dogs, i.e., dogs were quicker than humans, regardless of stimuli or method used. It might be argued that dogs have shorter attention spans (although this has not yet been investigated), are more easily distracted/bored (Burn 2017), or tend to avoid fixed stares, but this is unlikely, since the previous studies have reinforced the dogs to look at the stimuli.…”

“…Dogs looked more often at the ears, mouth, and 1 3 eyes in dog faces, and the frontalis, eyes, nose, and cheeks in human faces. Previous studies have had mixed results regarding preference for ownvs other-face species (own: Somppi et al 2012Somppi et al , 2014Somppi et al , 2016; human: Törnqvist et al 2015), and particular emotional expressions: (Racca et al 2012; only with species-emotion interaction: Somppi et al 2016). These conflicting results may stem from methodology (e.g., visual paired comparison vs eye-tracker, static vs dynamic stimuli).…”

Dogs and humans respond to emotionally competent stimuli by producing different facial actions

“…This would at least partly explain why untrained humans do not seem proficient in reading dogs’ facial and body language 78 – 80 , particularly subtle cues such as head turning or nose licking 81 . This is further supported by the neurocognitive evidence that people read dogs’ and humans’ social cues using overlapping brain areas 82 , 83 and similar cognitive mechanisms 76 , 84 . Indeed, humans represent non-human animals’ affective space similarly to that of conspecifics’ 71 , 85 and incorrectly identify emotions in dogs that have been shown to be a direct result of anthropomorphic subjective judgements (e.g.…”

Communication in Dogs

“…This hypothesis is supported by dogs’ higher attitude to follow owners’ signals rather than those from a stranger and to follow human gestures to locate food even if the olfactory information about its position is contradictory [ 1 ]. Furthermore, it has been reported in a recent eye-tracking study that dogs are able to discriminate between social and non-social interactions depicted on a picture, showing a longer gaze toward the individuals in a social context compared with a non-social one [ 50 ].…”