Domestic dogs respond correctly to verbal cues issued by an artificial agent

Shaw, Nicky; Riley, Lisa M.

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2020.104940

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Previous findings support the idea that dogs engage in various social interactions with artificial agents (e.g. [46][47][48]), and are thus likely to recognize the UMO as a (potential) social partner (see also [37]). We have no information about cats in similar situations, but they are extremely efficient predators, and their play behaviour, including interactive object play with the owner, is likely linked to hunting behaviour skills [49,50].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Exploring the advantages of using artificial agents to investigate animacy perception in cats and dogs

Abdai

Uccheddu²,

Gácsi³

et al. 2022

Bioinspir. Biomim.

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Self-propelled motion cues elicit the perception of inanimate objects as animate. Studies usually rely on looking behaviour of subjects toward stimuli displayed on a screen, but utilizing artificial agents (Unidentified Moving Objects, UMOs) provides more natural, interactive context. Here we investigated whether cats and dogs discriminate between UMOs showing animate vs inanimate motions, and how they react to UMOs’ interactive behaviour. Subjects first observed in turn the motion of an animate and inanimate UMO, and then they could move freely for 2 min while both UMOs were present (Two-way choice phase). In the following Specific motion phase, only the animate UMO showed one of three interactive behaviours: pushing a ball, luring motion, moving toward the subject (between-subject design). Then, subjects could move freely for 2 min again while the UMO was motionless. At the end, subjects were free to move in the room while the UMO was moving semi-randomly in the room. We found that dogs approached and touched the UMO(s) sooner and more frequently than cats, regardless of the context. In the Two-way choice phase, dogs looked at the animate UMO more often, and both species touched the animate UMO more frequently. However, whether the UMO showed playing, luring or assertive behaviour did not influence subjects’ behaviour. In sum, both species displayed distinctive behaviour toward the animate UMO, but in dogs, in addition to the physical contact this was also reflected by the looking behaviour. Overall, dogs were more keen to explore and interact with the UMO than cats, which might be due to the general increased stress of cats in novel environments. The findings indicate the importance of measuring multiple behaviours when assessing responses to animacy. Live demonstration by artificial agents provide unique opportunity to study social perception in non-human species.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Exploring the advantages of using artificial agents to investigate animacy perception in cats and dogs

Abdai

Uccheddu²,

Gácsi³

et al. 2022

Bioinspir. Biomim.

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“…Lakatos et al found that the agen's behavior of "calling the dog's name" and friendly communication with a dog-owner in front of the dogs in the familiarization phase had little effect on the two-choice task for the dog, but it did affect sociality toward the dog to the extent that it affected continuous behavioral changes, such as attention time [18] Shaw and Riley reported that a speaker can elicit desired responses from dogs if the agent speaks with appropriate attentional focus, like being placed at the height of a human's eyes and speaking in the dog-owner's pre-recorded voice, and appropriate food reward dispensing functions. There was no significant difference between the condition that the dog was alone (in the experimental room) or with both the dog owner and experimenters [35]. However, it should be taken into account that most of the dog-subjects were well-trained for competitive sports like agility, which means that their behavior may be different from ordinal dogs'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Gap between Owner's Perceptions and Dog's Behaviors Toward the Same Physical Agents

Kasuga

Ikeda

2020

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction

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Dogs are often considered as humans' oldest friends. The relationship between people and dogs (wherein they are regarded as family members in the home) is well-studied. Since social agents have recently become a part of family life, a new field of research has been introduced that is centered on the human-agent and dog-agent relationships. Hence, in this study, to investigate how social agents are perceived by dog owners and dogs, we employed existing communication agents such as smart speakers and conducted two experiments; the first one investigated dog owners' impression toward the agents in agent-owner interaction and the second one investigated dog's behavior in front of the agents during owner's speaking to the agents and the agents' speaking to the dogs. Furthermore, we statistically analyzed the results of thirty-three dog-owners and twenty-one dogs. The results obtained from the GODSPEED questionnaire analysis indicate that regarding aspects such as anthropomorphism, animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence, the dog-like smart speaker is significantly worse than the educational humanoid robots NAO and Pepper. Regarding aspects such as animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence, the dog-like smart speaker has a significantly lower rating than Google Home, and it has a lower rating than Pepper with respect to perceived safety. However, in the case of canine behavioral analysis, the percentage of individuals who engaged in social behaviors (such as sniffing the rear) in response to the dog-like smart speaker is found to be significantly higher than that for the other agents. Hence, although this study is an exploratory experiment in terms of subject limitations and determination of behavioral indicators, it is the first step towards bridging the gap between owners' and dogs' perceptions of an agent's sociality while employing the same physical agents. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; Empirical studies in interaction design; HCI design and evaluation methods.

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“…In addition, research on robots has been carried out in this domain. This research includes experiments using speaking physical agents in dog-training contexts [9,11] and research on the recognition of canine sociality in response to physical agents [1, 3-5, 7, 12]. However, most research on robots has been conducted on dogs rather than cats.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ideal Care Robot for Dogs vs. Cats Based on an Online Survey

Kasuga

Ikeda

2020

Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction

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Companion animals have been our social partners since ancient times. These animals, particularly dogs and cats, are also kept in households as family members. However, fewer people are able to take care of animals at home due to the increasing numbers of nuclear families and dual-income households. To investigate the need for care robots for companion animals, we conducted an online survey with dog and cat owners. In total, 1,521 and 1,219 people who have ever kept dogs and cats, respectively, completed our online survey. The results show that dog owners would prefer a humanoid care robots robot for dogs over machine-like robots, whereas cat owners showed the opposite preference; the results were statistically significant. In addition, there was a significant difference between dog and cat owners regarding owners desires for a care robot to walk the animal outside. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); • Social and professional topics → User characteristics.

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Domestic dogs respond correctly to verbal cues issued by an artificial agent

Cited by 8 publications

References 42 publications

Exploring the advantages of using artificial agents to investigate animacy perception in cats and dogs

Exploring the advantages of using artificial agents to investigate animacy perception in cats and dogs

Gap between Owner's Perceptions and Dog's Behaviors Toward the Same Physical Agents

The Ideal Care Robot for Dogs vs. Cats Based on an Online Survey

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