Have you ever wondered what really goes on in your dog's mind when you try to communicate with him? A team of researchers from theUniversity of Veterinary Medicine Vienna decided to find out using a decidedly innovative approach: high-tech glasses to track dogs' eye movements and finally understand what their language is and how they interpret our signals.
The most effective method of communication
There are many strategies for training a dog, but what is the best way to capture their attention? A team of scientists believe they have found the answer by combining two traditional cues, and collected data through a first-of-its-kind experiment using special eye-tracking devices.
Dog owners often try to communicate with their four-legged friends by looking at or pointing directly at an object. The team atUniversity of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, led by the postdoctoral candidate in comparative cognition Christoph Volter, wanted to find out which method was most effective.
Discovering the language between humans and dogs: the innovative experiment
To evaluate the best human-dog communication strategy, the researchers created a precise experimental setup. A researcher sat on his knees with a bowl on each side, only one of which contained a hidden treat. The dogs were then presented with five different scenarios, repeated six times each:
- Indicate;
- Point and look;
- Just look;
- Mime throwing a ball;
- No signal (control).
Not easy results
The initial test group included nearly 30 subjects, but not all dogs enjoyed wearing the ski-like goggles (seen in the cover photo of the article) for eye tracking.
“Three dogs did not accept the glasses…and two dogs were excessively agitated when in the test rooms,” the researchers explained in their study. published in the magazine Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Ultimately, the team worked with 20 collaborative dogs: eight mixed breeds along with four terriers, two Australian shepherds, two poodles, and single collies, flat coated retrievers, German shepherds, and Rhodesian ridgebacks.
The results were significant: Six dogs showed significantly above-average performance in the combined pointing-gaze condition, while three dogs correctly chose the treat bowl all six times during the pointing scenario. In contrast, no dog showed significantly above-average performance in the other conditions.
The implications for communication
“Our results show a clear difference in how dogs reacted to the directional but non-referential throwing signal compared to the referential hand gestures,” the study authors wrote.
Translated? The research revealed that while all cues that included hand movements reliably caused dogs to look to the side, only when a specific pointing gesture was presented did dogs redirect their gaze from the experimenter's hand to the designated bowl.
Dog language (and not only): open questions
Despite (empirical) evidence supporting the effectiveness of the pointing-gaze combination, researchers are cautious in stating that dogs definitively understand their owners' communication signals as we do.
“Is it more of a directive imperative for them to go somewhere? Or do they understand it in a more communicative way?” he asks. Volter in a statement accompanying the study.
Volter and his collaborators believe that further studies in the field of natural pedagogy are needed to definitively answer this question. In the meantime, they suggest that their research on dog language could support similar approaches in teaching children of the names of everyday objects.
They're still animals, right?
