Dogs (Canis familiaris) recognise our faces in photographs: implications for existing and future research

Eatherington, Carla Jade; Mongillo, Paolo; Lõoke, Miina; Marinelli, Lieta

doi:10.1007/s10071-020-01382-3

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…We do not even know if the dogs see the stimuli as representations of human faces. Although dogs are capable of recognizing their human caregiver's face from photographs 101 , and not only discriminate between positive and negative facial expressions of humans but react appropriately to the valence of the faces [41][42][43][44][45][46]102 , we found no such emotion effect in the dogs when looking at the caregiver and the stranger side by side.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 73%

“…The same is true for the other trend, when considering the first choices, where a few more dogs went towards the stranger's screen first than to the caregiver's screen. An explanation could be offered in terms of neophilia and novelty effects 85,88,101 . Dogs might have explored the side with the unknown human first, but after this initial exploration they might have decided to stay closer to their caregiver's face.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Karl

Boch

Zamansky

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Behavioural studies revealed that the dog–human relationship resembles the human mother–child bond, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we report the results of a multi-method approach combining fMRI (N = 17), eye-tracking (N = 15), and behavioural preference tests (N = 24) to explore the engagement of an attachment-like system in dogs seeing human faces. We presented morph videos of the caregiver, a familiar person, and a stranger showing either happy or angry facial expressions. Regardless of emotion, viewing the caregiver activated brain regions associated with emotion and attachment processing in humans. In contrast, the stranger elicited activation mainly in brain regions related to visual and motor processing, and the familiar person relatively weak activations overall. While the majority of happy stimuli led to increased activation of the caudate nucleus associated with reward processing, angry stimuli led to activations in limbic regions. Both the eye-tracking and preference test data supported the superior role of the caregiver’s face and were in line with the findings from the fMRI experiment. While preliminary, these findings indicate that cutting across different levels, from brain to behaviour, can provide novel and converging insights into the engagement of the putative attachment system when dogs interact with humans.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 73%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Karl

Boch

Zamansky

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…2013 ; Mongillo et al. 2017 ; Eatherington et al. 2020 ), whether we are attentive toward them or not (e.g., Schwab and Huber 2006 ; Kaminski and Nitzschner 2013 ), or how they assess in what parts of the environment we are interested in depending on our looking behavior (gaze following; e.g., Wallis et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Responses of Pet Dogs Witnessing Their Caregiver’s Positive Interactions with a Conspecific: An fMRI Study

Karl

Sladky

Lamm

et al. 2021

Cerebral Cortex Communications

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We have limited knowledge on how dogs perceive humans and their actions. Various researchers investigated how they process human facial expressions, but their brain responses to complex social scenarios remain unclear. While undergoing fMRI, we exposed pet dogs to videos showing positive social and neutral non-social interactions between their caregivers and another conspecific. Our main interest was how the dogs responded to their caregivers (compared to a stranger) engaging in a pleasant interaction with another dog that could be seen as social rival. We hypothesized that the dogs would show activation increases in limbic areas such as the amygdala, hypothalamus and insula, and likely show higher attention and arousal during the positive caregiver-dog interaction. When contrasting the social with the non-social interaction, we found increased activations in the left amygdala and the insular cortex. Crucially, the dogs’ hypothalamus showed strongest activation when the caregiver engaged in a positive social interaction. These findings indicate that dogs are sensitive to social affective human-dog interactions, and likely show higher valence attribution and arousal in a situation possibly perceived as a potential threat to their caregiver bonds. Our study provides a first window into the neural correlates of social and emotional processing in dogs.

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“…That is, approximately one-third of our subjects were extremely hesitant to make their choice; they failed to successfully complete even a single trial within a time limit of 40 s. This is surprising because we used sausage as a food reward, which is a strong incentive to dogs. Furthermore, there is good evidence that dogs can recognize their owners based on a picture (Eatherington et al, 2020), and although we used videos, which are more complex stimuli than pictures, it seems unlikely that dogs were not able to recognize their owners. Note, ll OPEN ACCESS however, that owners were asked to remain present during the test trials of our study because many dogs show signs of separation anxiety when the owner is not present (Topá l et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The implicit reward value of the owner's face for dogs

et al. 2021

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Summary It is increasingly assumed that domestication has equipped dogs with unique socio-cognitive skills, which raises the possibility of intriguing parallels between the social motivational systems of the two species. However, the positive incentive value of human facial stimuli is a largely unexplored area. Here, we investigated whether the owner's face serves as a social reinforcer. In a two-way choice task N = 39 dogs were presented with a short video about their owners' head showing the face (facing owner [FO]) vs. the back of the head (non-facing owner). Despite both locations containing equal food reward, dogs approached the container associated with FO more frequently (p < .001), and this was not affected by side, trial order, and choice latency. However, the considerable inter-individual differences in dogs' task performance suggest that the added social component required special social skills which need to be further explored.

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Dogs (Canis familiaris) recognise our faces in photographs: implications for existing and future research

Cited by 8 publications

References 44 publications

Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Neural Responses of Pet Dogs Witnessing Their Caregiver’s Positive Interactions with a Conspecific: An fMRI Study

The implicit reward value of the owner's face for dogs

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