Early-emerging and highly heritable sensitivity to human communication in dogs

Abstract

Early-emerging and highly heritable sensitivity to human communication in dogsHighlights d Dogs exhibit social skills and interest in human faces by 8 weeks of age d Genetic factors account for nearly half of variation in dog social skills d Puppies successfully used human gestures from the very first trial Authors

Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe

“…Further, two recent studies demonstrated that dogs, already as puppies, follow human gestural-communication and show an interest in human faces [75], which has not been observed in wolf puppies [78]. Additionally, half of the variation in these socio-cognitive skills could be accounted for by genetic factors, suggesting that dogs' attention to humans might have been enhanced during domestication [75 for review of both studies].…”

“…Behavioural [7,34,35,44,70–73] and imaging studies [58,59] have also demonstrated that dogs are able to perceive facial and bodily cues of dogs and humans and display high responsiveness to ostensive-referential bodily cues [45,46,74,75], already as puppies [76]. Our results do not contradict these findings, but suggest that visual regions involved in the perception of faces are also involved in the perception of other body parts, and may thus encode animate stimuli.…”

ManyDogs 1: A Multi-lab replication study of dogs' pointing comprehension (pre-registered report)

“…One of the earliest findings in canine science that catalyzed the growth of the field is that dogs follow pointing gestures more accurately than other species, such as great apes (Bräuer et al, 2006), and it is now well-replicated that dogs follow human pointing (e.g., Hare et al, 2002;Kaminski & Nitzschner, 2013;Miklósi et al, 1998;Soproni et al, 2001), even from a very young age (Bray et al, 2021). However, researchers still disagree as to whether dogs interpret human pointing as a social, communicative gesture or whether they simply associate human hands or limbs with food, and if the former, whether they perceive the gesture as informative or imperative.…”

“…In the ostensive version, the gesture will be accompanied by two kinds of salient direct social cues: eye-contact and calling the dog's name in a high-pitched voice. Recent studies suggest that dogs, like humans from a very early age, react to human-given gestures only when they are accompanied with attention-calling signals (Bray et al, 2021;Téglás MANYDOGS 1: DOGS' POINTING COMPREHENSION 12 et al, 2012). By contrasting these two conditions we will be able to see if the pointing gesture alone is sufficient for dogs to make the discrimination and to find the hidden food, or whether additional attention-calling signals are necessary.…”

“…To familiarize subjects with the testing space, the experimenter, and finding food under cups, a series of warm-up exercises will be conducted. These warm-ups are not intended to be predictive of test performance, simply to build an association between cups and rewards and gauge the subject's willingness to participate in the task and indicate a choice (similar paradigm used by Bray et al 2021, found that performance on warm-ups was not predictive of performance on a pointing task). Subjects will proceed to test trials after completing all phases of the warmups, or after 15 minutes has elapsed from beginning Phase 1.…”