The perception of human faces by dogs: Perceptual and cognitive adaptations

Huber, Ludwig; Racca, Anaïs; Yoon, Jennifer M. D.; Virányi, Zsófia; Range, Friederike

doi:10.1016/j.jveb.2014.09.026

Cited by 1 publication

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“…A further way to investigate the role of individual experience with human faces is to compare the dogs' looking at familiar and unfamiliar faces. It is already known that dogs are able to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar faces, either implicitly by exhibiting looking preferences [ 65 , 66 ] or by making the discrimination explicit in a two-choice task [ 67 ]. However, it is not yet known if dogs show preferences and respond to differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces only if forced to do so or if dogs spontaneously scan familiar faces and unfamiliar faces differently.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Processing of Human Emotional Faces by Pet and Lab Dogs: Evidence for Lateralization and Experience Effects

et al. 2016

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From all non-human animals dogs are very likely the best decoders of human behavior. In addition to a high sensitivity to human attentive status and to ostensive cues, they are able to distinguish between individual human faces and even between human facial expressions. However, so far little is known about how they process human faces and to what extent this is influenced by experience. Here we present an eye-tracking study with dogs emanating from two different living environments and varying experience with humans: pet and lab dogs. The dogs were shown pictures of familiar and unfamiliar human faces expressing four different emotions. The results, extracted from several different eye-tracking measurements, revealed pronounced differences in the face processing of pet and lab dogs, thus indicating an influence of the amount of exposure to humans. In addition, there was some evidence for the influences of both, the familiarity and the emotional expression of the face, and strong evidence for a left gaze bias. These findings, together with recent evidence for the dog's ability to discriminate human facial expressions, indicate that dogs are sensitive to some emotions expressed in human faces.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%