Human Listeners Are Able to Classify Dog (Canis familiaris) Barks Recorded in Different Situations.

Abstract

The authors investigated whether human listeners could categorize played-back dog (Canis familiaris) barks recorded in various situations and associate them with emotional ratings. Prerecorded barks of a Hungarian herding dog breed (Mudi) provided the sample. Human listeners were asked to rate emotionality of the vocalization and to categorize the situations on the basis of alternative situations provided on a questionnaire. The authors found almost no effect of previous experience with the given dog breed or of owning a dog. Listeners were able to categorize bark situations high above chance level. Emotionality ratings for particular bark samples correlated with peak and fundamental frequency and interbark intervals. The authors did not find a significant effect of tonality (harmonic-to-noise ratio) on either the emotionality rating or situation categorization of the human listeners. Humans' ability to recognize meaning suggests that barks could serve as an effective means of communication between dog and human.

Auditory Communication in Domestic Dogs

“…This has been confirmed in single-breed and mixed-breed experiments ) and is sufficiently predictive that barks can be reliably categorised as aggressive or playful on the basis of statistical analysis (Yin & McCowan, 2004). Moreover, Pongrácz et al (2005) showed that human listeners are able to discriminate between barks recorded when dogs were approached by a stranger, antagonised by a Schutzhund trainer, going on a walk, left in isolation, or playing. In addition, listeners attributed emotional content to barks from the preceding contexts (aggressiveness, fear, playfulness, or happiness; .…”

“…In support of this, dog owners have been shown to spontaneously produce PDS when interacting with their dogs during situations designed to assess attachment, namely adaptations of Ainsworth's Strange Situation Test, which stimulate caregiving and protective responses. Although both men and women used PDS, the female owners spent significantly more time speaking to their dogs and were more likely to use PDS (Prato-Previde et al, 2006). It is interesting to note, however, that owners may be inherently sensitive to the limited linguistic abilities of their dogs: vowel hyperarticulation, a critical component of IDS thought to be specific to the teaching of language, is absent from PDS (Burnham et al, 2002).…”

“…It is also important to note that many studies to date have focussed on a single breed (e.g., Hungarian mudi; Pongrácz et al, 2005Marós et al, 2008) or a very small sample resulting in a limited number of breeds (e.g., ten dogs; Yin, 2002;Yin & McCowan, 2004). Because the range of morphological and behavioural variation between different dog breeds is so great, this might have led to biased representations of the occurrence and communicative content of dog vocalisations.…”

“…The ability of dogs to recognise prosodic cues in the voice is also likely to be facilitated by the way many dog owners speak to their pets. Just as it is possible that dogs' vocal repertoire has adapted to facilitate interspecific communication with humans (Pongrácz et al, 2005), so humans also change their speech patterns when talking to dogs and other pets. Pet-Directed Speech (PDS) mimics the way in which parents speak to their young children (Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman, 1982).…”

Heterogeneity of hunting ability and nutritional status among domestic dogs in lowland Nicaragua

“…Note that hunters are typically able to discern from the barking which dog first detected the animal (see also refs. 22,23).…”