Orienting Asymmetries and Physiological Reactivity in Dogs' Response to Human Emotional Faces

Overview

Journal Learn Behav

Publisher Springer

Specialties Psychology
Social Sciences
Veterinary Medicine

Date 2018 Jun 21

PMID 29923158

Citations 26

Authors

Marcello Siniscalchi

Serenella dIngeo

Angelo Quaranta

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Recent scientific literature shows that emotional cues conveyed by human vocalizations and odours are processed in an asymmetrical way by the canine brain. In the present study, during feeding behaviour, dogs were suddenly presented with 2-D stimuli depicting human faces expressing the Ekman's six basic emotion (e.g. anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, and neutral), simultaneously into the left and right visual hemifields. A bias to turn the head towards the left (right hemisphere) rather than the right side was observed with human faces expressing anger, fear, and happiness emotions, but an opposite bias (left hemisphere) was observed with human faces expressing surprise. Furthermore, dogs displayed higher behavioural and cardiac activity to picture of human faces expressing clear arousal emotional state. Overall, results demonstrated that dogs are sensitive to emotional cues conveyed by human faces, supporting the existence of an asymmetrical emotional modulation of the canine brain to process basic human emotions.

Citing Articles

Dogs functionally respond to and use emotional information from human expressions.

Albuquerque N, Resende B Evol Hum Sci. 2023; 5:e2.

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Horses discriminate between human facial and vocal expressions of sadness and joy.

Jardat P, Liehrmann O, Reigner F, Parias C, Calandreau L, Lansade L Anim Cogn. 2023; 26(5):1733-1742.

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Relationship between asymmetric nostril use and human emotional odours in cats.

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Horses discriminate human body odors between fear and joy contexts in a habituation-discrimination protocol.

Jardat P, Destrez A, Damon F, Menard-Peroy Z, Parias C, Barriere P Sci Rep. 2023; 13(1):3285.

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