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Adachi, I., Kuwahata, H., & Fujita, K. (2007). Dogs recall their owner's face upon hearing the owner's voice. Anim. Cogn., 10(1), 17–21.
Abstract: Abstract We tested whether dogs have a cross-modal representation of human individuals. We presented domestic dogs with a photo of either the owner's or a stranger's face on the LCD monitor after playing back a voice of one of those persons. A voice and a face matched in half of the trials (Congruent condition) and mismatched in the other half (Incongruent condition). If our subjects activate visual images of the voice, their expectation would be contradicted in Incongruent condition. It would result in the subjects` longer looking times in Incongruent condition than in Congruent condition. Our subject dogs looked longer at the visual stimulus in Incongruent condition than in Congruent condition. This suggests that dogs actively generate their internal representation of the owner's face when they hear the owner calling them. This is the first demonstration that nonhuman animals do not merely associate auditory and visual stimuli but also actively generate a visual image from auditory information. Furthermore, our subject also looked at the visual stimulus longer in Incongruent condition in which the owner's face followed an unfamiliar person's voice than in Congruent condition in which the owner's face followed the owner's voice. Generating a particular visual image in response to an unfamiliar voice should be difficult, and any expected images from the voice ought to be more obscure or less well defined than that of the owners. However, our subjects looked longer at the owner's face in Incongruent condition than in Congruent condition. This may indicate that dogs may have predicted that it should not be the owner when they heard the unfamiliar person's voice.
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Daniels, T. J., & Bekoff, M. (1989). Feralization: The making of wild domestic animals. Behav. Process., 19(1-3), 79–94.
Abstract: The widely accepted viewpoint that feralization is the reverse of domestication requires that the feralization process be restricted to populations of animals and, therefore, cannot occur in individuals. An alternative, ontogenetic approach is presented in which feralization is defined as the process by which individual domestic animals either become desocialized from humans, or never become socialized, and thus behave as untamed, non-domestic animals. Feralization will vary among species and, intraspecifically, will depend upon an individual's age and history of socialization to humans. Because feralization is not equated with morphological change resulting from evolutionary processes, species formation is not an accurate indicator of feral condition.
Keywords: feralization; domestication; feral dogs
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Reid, P. J. (2009). Adapting to the human world: Dogs' responsiveness to our social cues. Behav. Process., 80(3), 325–333.
Abstract: Dogs are more skilful than a host of other species at tasks which require they respond to human communicative gestures in order to locate hidden food. Four basic interpretations for this proficiency surface from distilling the research findings. One possibility is that dogs simply have more opportunity than other species to learn to be responsive to human social cues. A different analysis suggests that the domestication process provided an opening for dogs to apply general cognitive problem-solving skills to a novel social niche. Some researchers go beyond this account and propose that dogs' co-evolution with humans equipped them with a theory of mind for social exchanges. Finally, a more prudent approach suggests that sensitivity to the behaviours of both humans and conspecifics would be particularly advantageous for a social scavenger like the dog. A predisposition to attend to human actions allows for rapid early learning of the association between gestures and the availability of food.
Keywords: Domestic dog; Social cognition; Communicative gestures
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Feuerstein, N., & Terkel, J. (2008). Interrelationships of dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus L.) living under the same roof. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 113(1-3), 150–165.
Abstract: In the process of domestication, dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus) have undergone thousands of years of genetic changes that have adapted them to the human environment. Both species have acquired a global distribution and it has become quite common to find homes with the two living side by side. Nevertheless, there is widespread belief that interspecific communication between dogs and cats is problematic, stemming from their separate evolutionary development and different social structures. Consequently, many people considering possible adoption of both species are concerned about their ability to get along. Interrelationships of dogs and cats living together were studied here in an attempt to determine the main factors influencing the type of relationship likely to develop between the two species. Two approaches were used: (1) a questionnaire completed by owners of both dog(s) and cat(s), which provided a broad database of the animals' behaviors; and (2) observations carried out in participants' homes on their dog-cat interactions. Two separate ethograms for dogs and cats served for analyses of their body language. The findings revealed the following: Both species showed a similar ability to establish a relatively amicable relationship with the other species; the animals' gender had little influence on the nature of their interrelationship; and adoption of the cat prior to the dog appears to conduce to establishing an amicable relationship, as does their first encounter taking place at an early age (up to 6 months of age in cats and up to 1 year in dogs). The findings also suggest that the majority of these dogs and cats understood the particular body language displayed by one animal that has an opposite meaning for the other species; and that the earlier the age of first encounter between the two, the better this understanding. It can be concluded that exposure of both species at an early age to the presence of the other facilitates the learning of each other's body language, and the consequent establishment of an amicable relationship. A better understanding of the various factors that contribute to determining the two species' relationship should not only improve the quality of life of these pets, but also reassure and encourage more people to adopt both cat and dog.
Keywords: Cats; Dogs; Shared home; Interrelationship; Aggression; Amicability; Indifference; Adaptation
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Kotrschal, K., Schöberl, I., Bauer, B., Thibeaut, A. - M., & Wedl, M. (2009). Dyadic relationships and operational performance of male and female owners and their male dogs. Behav. Process., 81(3), 383–391.
Abstract: In the paper we investigate how owner personality, attitude and gender influence dog behavior, dyadic practical functionality and the level of dog salivary cortisol. In three meetings, 12 female and 10 male owners of male dogs answered questionnaires including the Neo-FFI human personality inventory. Their dyadic behavior was video-taped in a number of test situations, and saliva samples were collected. Owners who scored highly in neuroticism (Neo-FFI dimension one) viewed their dogs as social supporters and spent much time with them. Their dogs had low baseline cortisol levels, but such dyads were less successful in the operational task. Owners who scored highly in extroversion (Neo-FFI dimension two) appreciated shared activities with their dogs which had relatively high baseline cortisol values. Dogs that had female owners were less sociable-active (dog personality axis 1) than dogs that had male owners. Therefore, it appears that owner gender and personality influences dyadic interaction style, dog behavior and dyadic practical functionality.
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Virányi, Z., Topál, J., Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á., & Csányi, V. (2004). Dogs respond appropriately to cues of humans' attentional focus. Behav. Process., 66(2), 161–172.
Abstract: Dogs' ability to recognise cues of human visual attention was studied in different experiments. Study 1 was designed to test the dogs' responsiveness to their owner's tape-recorded verbal commands (Down!) while the Instructor (who was the owner of the dog) was facing either the dog or a human partner or none of them, or was visually separated from the dog. Results show that dogs were more ready to follow the command if the Instructor attended them during instruction compared to situations when the Instructor faced the human partner or was out of sight of the dog. Importantly, however, dogs showed intermediate performance when the Instructor was orienting into 'empty space' during the re-played verbal commands. This suggests that dogs are able to differentiate the focus of human attention. In Study 2 the same dogs were offered the possibility to beg for food from two unfamiliar humans whose visual attention (i.e. facing the dog or turning away) was systematically varied. The dogs' preference for choosing the attentive person shows that dogs are capable of using visual cues of attention to evaluate the human actors' responsiveness to solicit food-sharing. The dogs' ability to understand the communicatory nature of the situations is discussed in terms of their social cognitive skills and unique evolutionary history.
Keywords: Animals; *Attention; Bonding, Human-Pet; Communication; *Cues; Dogs; Humans; Recognition (Psychology)
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Schwab, C., & Huber, L. (2006). Obey or not obey? Dogs (Canis familiaris) behave differently in response to attentional states of their owners. J Comp Psychol, 120(3), 169–175.
Abstract: Sixteen domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were tested in a familiar context in a series of 1-min trials on how well they obeyed after being told by their owner to lie down. Food was used in 1/3 of all trials, and during the trial the owner engaged in 1 of 5 activities. The dogs behaved differently depending on the owner's attention to them. When being watched by the owner, the dogs stayed lying down most often and/or for the longest time compared with when the owner read a book, watched TV, turned his or her back on them, or left the room. These results indicate that the dogs sensed the attentional state of their owners by judging observable behavioral cues such as eye contact and eye, head, and body orientation.
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Soproni, K., Miklósi, Á., Topál, J., & Csányi, V. (2002). Dogs' (Canis familiaris) responsiveness to human pointing gestures. J Comp Psychol, 116(1), 27–34.
Abstract: In a series of 3 experiments, dogs (Canis familiaris) were presented with variations of the human pointing gesture: gestures with reversed direction of movement, cross-pointing, and different arm extensions. Dogs performed at above chance level if they could see the hand (and index finger) protruding from the human body contour. If these minimum requirements were not accessible, dogs still could rely on the body position of the signaler. The direction of movement of the pointing arm did not influence the performance. In summary, these observations suggest that dogs are able to rely on relatively novel gestural forms of the human communicative pointing gesture and that they are able to comprehend to some extent the referential nature of human pointing.
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Soproni, K., Miklósi, A., Topál, J., & Csányi, V. (2001). Comprehension of human communicative signs in pet dogs (Canis familiaris). J Comp Psychol, 115(2), 122–126.
Abstract: On the basis of a study by D. J. Povinelli, D. T. Bierschwale, and C. G. Cech (1999), the performance of family dogs (Canis familiaris) was examined in a 2-way food choice task in which 4 types of directional cues were given by the experimenter: pointing and gazing, head-nodding (“at target”), head turning above the correct container (“above target”), and glancing only (“eyes only”). The results showed that the performance of the dogs resembled more closely that of the children in D. J. Povinelli et al.'s study, in contrast to the chimpanzees' performance in the same study. It seems that dogs, like children, interpret the test situation as being a form of communication. The hypothesis is that this similarity is attributable to the social experience and acquired social routines in dogs because they spend more time in close contact with humans than apes do, and as a result dogs are probably more experienced in the recognition of human gestures.
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Udell, M. A. R., Dorey, N. R., & Wynne, C. D. L. (2008). Wolves outperform dogs in following human social cues. Anim. Behav., 76(6), 1767–1773.
Abstract: Domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, have been shown capable of finding hidden food by following pointing gestures made with different parts of the human body. However, previous studies have reported that hand-reared wolves, C. lupus, fail to locate hidden food in response to similar points in the absence of extensive training. The failure of wolves to perform this task has led to the proposal that the ability to understand others' intentions is a derived character in dogs, not present in the ancestral population (wolves). Here we show that wolves, given the right rearing environment and daily interaction with humans, can use momentary distal human pointing cues to find food without training, whereas dogs tested outdoors and dogs at an animal shelter do not follow the same human points. In line with past studies, pet dogs tested indoors were successful in following these points. We also show that the reported failure of wolves in some past studies may be due to differences in the testing environment. Our findings indicate that domestication is not a prerequisite for human-like social cognition in canids, and show the need for additional research on the role of rearing conditions and environmental factors in the development of higher-level cognitive abilities.
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