Dogs Gauge Intention By Human Communication Style

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Dogs are similar to babies in their ability to discern an intent by a human to communicate meaningful information. Rose Eveleth reports.

January 5, 2012

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Sit, stay, down, no, don't eat that, drop it. Dogs. We pet them, we love them, we talk to them. But are they listening?

Of course they are. And recent research found that dogs are paying attention not only to what we say, but to how we say it.

The study [ErnQ T?gl?s et al, Dogs' gaze following is tuned to human communicative signals, Current Biology, link to come], used a method commonly deployed on babies: tracking eye movements. If the baby, or in this case the dog, looks at something, it?s assumed that they're interested in it.

The researchers showed dogs two videos. In one, a person looks into the camera and says "hi dog!" in a high-pitched voice before turning towards a plastic pot. In the other, the person avoids eye contact and says ?hi dog? in a lower voice before turning towards the pot.

And the dogs looked at the pot more often after the "hi dog!" than after the ?high dog.? Meaning the animated delivery style cues the dogs of an intension to communicate. Dogs thus perceive such intent similarly to babies. Except babies are slightly less likely to dig up the flowers in that plastic pot.

?Rose Eveleth

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]

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