Dogs' Social Referencing towards Owners and Strangers

Abstract

Social referencing is a process whereby an individual uses the emotional information provided by an informant about a novel object/stimulus to guide his/her own future behaviour towards it. In this study adult dogs were tested in a social referencing paradigm involving a potentially scary object with either their owner or a stranger acting as the informant and delivering either a positive or negative emotional message. The aim was to evaluate the influence of the informant's identity on the dogs' referential looking behaviour and behavioural regulation when the message was delivered using only vocal and facial emotional expressions. Results show that most dogs looked referentially at the informant, regardless of his/her identity. Furthermore, when the owner acted as the informant dogs that received a positive emotional message changed their behaviour, looking at him/her more often and spending more time approaching the object and close to it; conversely, dogs that were given a negative message took longer to approach the object and to interact with it. Fewer differences in the dog's behaviour emerged when the informant was the stranger, suggesting that the dog-informant relationship may influence the dog's behavioural regulation. Results are discussed in relation to studies on human-dog communication, attachment, mood modification and joint attention.

Wolves do not join the dance: Sophisticated aggression control by adjusting to human social signals in dogs

“…This suggests a difference in their tendency to use their human caregivers for social referencing to guide their own understanding of such socially challenging, ambiguous situations. It is worth mentioning that looking at others when confronted with ambiguous events in order to use the emotional reactions of others to regulate their own behaviour is a 'behaviour tool' commonly used by human infants (Klinnert et al, 1986), and recently has been revealed in dogs (Merola et al, 2012). Our results raise the possibility that this functionally infant-analogue behaviour in dogs is one of the hallmarks of the fine-tunedness to humans of this domestic species.…”

“…In this controlled game situation the endeavour to involve the passive owner in the interaction by gazing or approaching might have been an alternative solution to cope with the ambiguity (see also Merola et al, 2012).…”

“…This type of vocalisation was produced mainly as the first vocalisation in the guarding tests, which could reflect dogs' uncertainty of their project at the beginning of the Game episode (one of the biologically relevant meanings of the use of high pitch is uncertainty of the speaker, see Gussenhoven and Chen, 2000). The unusual passive behaviour of the owner must have increased the ambiguity of the situation for the dogs, because they could not use the owner as a source of information or support (Merola et al, 2012). However, due to the familiar human's repeated enticements and the lack of the owner's interference, dogs seemed to recognise that they were expected or allowed to be involved in the interaction by guarding the object.…”

Differential effects of oxytocin on social sensitivity in two distinct breeds of dogs ( Canis familiaris )

“…The Unreachable food task was followed by the Potentially dangerous object task (for a similar task see Merola et al, 2012). This task was used to explore the dogs' tendency to display referential looking (a form of information seeking behavior when facing a potentially dangerous object) towards humans, and, whether intranasal administration of oxytocin could modify this behavior in the two distinct dog breeds (for video protocol and photograph see Supplementary material S2).…”

“…These have led to a wide range of behavioral analogies between humans and dogs (Topál et al, 2009) and dogs often show human infant-like communicative receptivity in interaction with humans (Miklósi and Topál 2012). For example, dogs often use eye gaze cues in a flexible manner; they show a tendency to make eye contact with their owner in unsolvable tasks (Gaunet, 2008;Miklósi et al, 2005) and alternate their gaze between the potential human helper and the object of desire (Gaunet and Deputte 2011;Merola et al, 2012;Miklósi et al, 2000). Gaze alternation is a three-step sequence whereby the signaler alternates its gaze directly between a target and the partner, and it seems to fulfill the requirements of active information sharing since looking at the human partner − which is subsequently followed by looking towards the target − is functionally referential signaling (Lakatos et al, 2009;Soproni et al, 2001).…”