Interactive Digital Gameplay Can Lower Stress Hormone Levels in Home Alone Dogs — A Case for Animal Welfare Informatics

Abstract

Social isolation, when owners are not home, is a major stressor for dogs leading to separation anxiety and related behavioral and physiological issues. We investigate whether a digital interactive game requiring no human interference reduces stress response in dogs when isolated. An interactive game was developed specifically for canines. Dogs were domestically tested, totaling 15 days with and 15 days without the game. Twice-daily saliva samples were analyzed for cortisol stress hormone concentrations; ethograms were constructed. Combined data confirm that digital interactive games can lessen physiological and behavioral stress responses in dogs, and that the effect is modulated by a dog's personality.

A dog centred approach to the analysis of dogs' interactions with media on TV screens

“…This has been reported in studies with humans where they will watch videos that disgust them (Kunz et al, 2009). Enjoyment is a hard thing to quantify and so far has only been studied through the measurement of cortisol levels and heart rate levels (Rehn and Keeling, 2011;Geurtsen et al, 2015), owner assessments . Engagement and enjoyment, however, are integral and prerequisites part of a playful system experience but while the measurement of these is beyond the scope of this present study, a core principle in DCI is to ensure the dog is not coerced or tricked into doing the research work.…”

“…Most animals do not have the means to communicate effectively with humans using any sort of vocal language and so the default means for understanding them is often the use of physiological and behavioural measurements and observations. With dogs, feedback on interfaces and interactive products has come from eye movements (Somppi, 2012), head gestures (Valentin et al, 2015, Hirskyj-Douglas andRead, 2014), nose reactions (Johnston-Wilder et al, 2015), mouth reactions (Robinson, 2014a(Robinson, , 2014b, heart and respiration rates (Mealin et al, 2015), cortisol levels (Rehn and Keeling, 2011;Geurtsen et al, 2015) and general posture analysis (Aspling et al, 2015), often via biotelemetry devices (Paci et al, 2016). Using these behaviours and actions as a form of communication, interfaces have been developed that allow dogs to react to stimuli from interactive tablet devices and use haptic technology (Moore Jackson et al 2013;Byrne et al, 2016).…”

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog... Unless You're Another Dog

“…In DCI interfaces, a dogs response can be derived from facial reactions such as eye movements [44], nose movements [20,52] and head movements [14,17,47]; behaviors such as biting [19], pulling [40], pushing buttons [12,39], touch screens [52] and posture analysis [31]; and biological responses such as heart and respiration rates [31] and hormone levels [12]. These behaviors and biological responses have been used within DCI systems to allow the dog to feed-back to a system such as operating nose plate interfaces [20], bitable pulleys and buttons [19,40], paw activated buttons [12,39], proximity [18], and haptic vests [19,26,5].…”

Manifestações da empatia na experiência de (game) design interespécie

“…Entre os objetivos principais desses estudos está a exploração das interações lúdicas mediadas pela tecnologia como uma via potencial de melhoria de qualidade de vida de animais. Pode-se citar, por exemplo, uma interface para a interação remota entre humanos e porcos (ALFRINK et al, 2013); um jogo interativo para o entretenimento e estímulo cognitivo de cães que passam os dias sozinhos em casa (GEURTSEN et al, 2015); e um projeto de experiências de entretenimento para elefantes (FRENCH et al, 2018).…”