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Finalprojectnon Verbalcommunication CP Comments
Finalprojectnon Verbalcommunication CP Comments
Finalprojectnon Verbalcommunication CP Comments
Ryleigh Repass
Development of Non-Verbal Communication - Psych 362
Carrie Palmquist
4/4/16
Introduction:
The theory that dogs can follow human gestures is not a novel one - anyone with a dog
has witnessed this on a personal level. It has been suggested that dogs coevolved with humans up
to 100,000 years ago and were naturally selected for their ability to follow gestures (Paxton,
2000; Vila et al., 1997). It is well known that dogs are able to follow a humans point (Hare &
Tomasello, 1999). However, there are many factors that can affect how well dogs are able to
interpret this gesture (pointing, bowing, nodding, head turning, and glancing gestures). Soproni,
Miklosi, Topal, & Csanyi (2002) addressed what which aspects of gestures dogs pay attention to
movement, cross-pointing, and different arm extensions. They concluded that the body contour
of the raised arm is most likely what the dogs are paying attention to. In situations where the
body contour is not accessible, the dogs are able to use body positions of the signaler.
The fact that dogs have the ability to interpret different types of gestures suggests that
they understand the communicative intent of humans. In the same study by Soproni et al. (2002),
they argue for the idea that dogs are able to rely on pointing as a referential gesture. In other
words, pointing by humans is not only intentional and conveying of a message but is also
correctly interpreted by the dog.
In almost all experiments on dogs comprehension of pointing, the human is facing
towards the dog and their face is visible. Even in situations where experimenters do not look
towards the correct direction, minute facial cues are possibly present. A prime example of
unintentional cueing in an experiment is with Clever Hans - the horse that knew math! As it
turned out, he simply stomped his foot until a cue was inadvertently given by the experimenter.
This is an incredible example of following cues but not a very good example of non-human
animals performing mathematics. Thus, it is important to consider the fact that dogs might be
picking up on very small, unintentional gestures by the experimenter. Therefore, whether or not
dogs are able to follow gestures when the face is not visible (i.e. covered or facing away) is not
known and could provide a non-biased understanding to what dogs are paying attention to.
Though there are many experiments that concentrate on the importance of the face in an
infants and chimpanzees ability to follow a gesture, there is little known for dogs (Johnson,
Slaughter & Carey, 1998, Povinelli, Bering, & Giambrone 2003). Povinelli et al. (2003)
performed a series of experiments on chimpanzees ability to gesture in correct situations. Of
interest to this study, is the paradigm where the experimenters covered their face or eyes with a
blindfold, hand or bucket and the paradigm where the experimenters were facing away from the
chimpanzees. What they found is that chimpanzees performed well above chance on gesturing to
the correct individual when one of the experimenters was facing away but when one
experimenters faces were covered, chimpanzees continued to gesture towards the incorrect
individual (i.e. the one that could not see). Here, it is suggested that chimpanzees use the frontal
orientation of the experimenter and not the eyes/face to determine if the experimenter will follow
their gesture. This is important because the face has seemingly little to no importance for these
chimpanzees which suggests that they have a low level understanding of what is important for
communication to occur when gesturing.
So where do dogs fit into this level of comprehension? The following experiment is
designed to address this question. Similar to the chimpanzee study, the experimenter will either
face the dog with their head covered or face away from the dog while pointing. The two parts of
this study are to determine the extent to which dogs can comprehend a point: is the front of the
human important as in the case of the chimpanzees or not at all? If the dog is not able to follow
the points when the experimenter is not facing the dog, then one could conclude that the front of
the human as well as the face is a significant factor in pointing comprehension. However, if the
dog can follow the point even when the human is facing away, one can presume that the contour
of the body is of significance. In order to eliminate the possibility that the face is inadvertently
providing gestures for dogs, one would need to cover their face during experimentation. In the
case where the experimenter is facing the dog with their face covered while pointing, one would
still expect the dog to follow the point if the contour of the body is a defining factor.
Method:
Participants:
Training:
Experimenter tried to get the dogs attention by saying his/her name and making eye
contact. The experimenter showed the dog the treat then placed it underneath one of the cups.
The experimenter stepped back and pointed to the cup. The owner released the dog and allowed
him to choose. If the correct one was chosen, the dog was given the treat and praised by the
owner. If the dog chose the incorrect one or none of them, the experimenter retrieved the treat
and showed it to the dog but does not allow him to eat it. This was repeated as many times as
necessary to train the dog to be aware that a treat was under the cups.
Testing:
Phase 1: Dog was removed from the room by the owner while the experimenter placed a
treat under both of the cups. The experimenter then faced away from the cups. The owner
brought the dog back into the room and had him face towards the experimenter. The
experimenter got the dogs attention by saying his name. A bystander provided cues to the
experimenter so they knew when the dog was paying attention. At this point, the experimenter
pointed to one of the cups (note: both cups contained treats to avoid bias towards cup that
smelled of treats). The owner then released the dog. The dogs reaction was recorded. There
were two possible outcomes: correct choice - dog chose the right cup and incorrect choice - dog
chose the opposite cup or looked to the experimenters hand instead of the cup or did nothing. If
the dog chose the correct cup, they were rewarded with a treat and praise from the owner. If they
chose the wrong cup, nothing happened. Dogs were recorded as choosing the correct cup if they
immediately walked towards the correct one and sniffed or touched the cup. Actions after the
initial choice were not recorded. This was repeated 5 times.
Phase 2: Same as phase 1 except the experimenter covered their face with a reusable
cloth bag instead of facing away. This was repeated 5 times.
Results:
Dogs one through three were initially studied before adjustments were made. All but one
dog, Sebastian the pug, chose correctly on both tasks. Small adjustments were made to the
training phase (only completed as many as necessary as opposed to completing 5) and option
other as a choice for the dog was combined with incorrect. Dogs four and five were then
observed. Dog 4, Maisy, chose incorrectly on one of the five tasks for phase 1 and three of the
five tasks for phase 2. Dog 5 chose correctly every time. Exact choices per dog can be seen in
Figure 1a-e.
Chi square test was performed for dogs 1 and 4 between phases and no significant
difference was observed (p=1, p=.19 respectively) - all dogs performed similarly or exactly the
same between phase one and phase two. Note: only dogs one and four chose incorrectly.
Discussion:
As hypothesized, most dogs were able to follow the point to the correct cup under both
conditions. Thus, it appears that minute facial gestures nor facing forward actually affect the
dogs ability to follow these gestures. This study supports the hypothesis that dogs pay attention
to the contour of the body in order to follow a gesture. If looking at just this study, it is easy to
interpret the results as dogs having a low level understanding for pointing. It appears that dogs,
because they do not need the face or even the front of the humans body to follow a point, are
simply learning the behavior of arm equals food. More so, because the dogs look to the location
of the head, i.e. where the face would be, and hold that gaze before following the point, it could
be interpreted that dogs do not even understand the significance of seeing. However, combining
this data with that of other studies proves otherwise.
Dogs are able to generalize novel situations to interpret a cue. In this study, the novel
situation is pointing while facing away from the dog or pointing with a bag covering the face.
Normally, pointing is combined with mutual gaze following and therefore, lack of this gaze is
quite new for these dogs. Povinelli, Reaux, Bierschwale, Allain, and Simon (1997) suggest that
the ability to interpret novel cues is supportive evidence that dogs comprehend pointing as
referential in nature. Based on this, dogs are able to understand referentiality. However, Lakatos,
Soproni, Doka, and Miklosi (2009) do not entirely agree. They say that we can conclude that
Scientists Udell, Giglio, and Wynne (2008) suggest that dogs are able to follow cues so
well because they have been raised in such close contact to humans. They hypothesize that the
ability to follow cues is reliant on humans performing these cues. They tested this hypothesis by
object choice task with both human cues and non human cues (i.e. mechanical arm, stuffed
animal look). They found that dogs performed significantly worse on the non human cues than
the human cues, supporting their hypothesis. So what does this say about the dogs ability to
comprehend gestures? This study shows support for the theory that dogs are able to comprehend
that gesturing is a communicative act. Had the dogs performed just as well in the nonhuman
gesturing trials as the human ones, then one could presume that dogs do not understand that
gesturing by humans is a form of communication. However, dogs do perform significantly better
with humans than without.
Another important aspect to address in regards to dogs ability to follow gestures is
rearing conditions. Though many scientists mention the importance of dogs coevolving with
humans (Soproni, Miklosi, Topal, & Csanyi, 2001; Soproni et al., 2002; Udell et al., 2008), few
scientists address the importance of how close to humans the individual dog was raised. The
differences in ability to understand gestures has been documented between captive reared and
wild populations of apes (Soproni et al., 2001) where enculturated apes do not need any training
to follow communicative gestures. One of the few studies that addresses the possible differences
in dogs is by Udell, Dorey and Wynne (2010) in which they perform human-guided objectchoice tasks on stray dogs living in a shelter. Similar to studies on apes, stray dogs initially
performed poorly on object-choice tasks but showed a learning effect across trials.
This learning effect across trials is also documented in hand-reared wolves (Viranyi et al.,
2008). Dogs, having evolved from wolves, are often times considered the domesticated wolf.
Therefore, people often attribute many behaviors of dogs as predisposed to the species. However,
rearing conditions have an effect on their ability to comprehend cues, which suggests dogs do not
have this predisposition. Throughout species, humans included, environmental and
developmental factors show a large effect on comprehension of referentiality. The fact that
comprehension of pointing appears to be a learned and developed ability further supports the
theory that understanding the pointing gesture requires a high-level of cognition. Thus, keeping
all the research in mind, one can conclude that dogs have a high-level cognitive ability.
However, further research needs to be completed as to the importance of the environment on the
ability to learn. An interesting theory that should be tested is that shelter dogs or stray dogs are
genetically different from pet dogs and therefore develop on a cognitively different level. If this
theory is true, then comparing the results of shelter dogs to that of pet dogs in terms of
environment being the only differing factor might not be entirely accurate.
Future studies might further test the theory that dogs follow the contour of the body in a
gesture by gesturing without a visible contour. However, the preliminary findings of this study
suggest that the contour is significant which is supportive of original hypotheses.
References:
Johnson, S., Slaughter, V., & Carey, S. (1998). Whose gaze will infants follow? The
elicitation of gaze-following in 12-month-olds. Developmental Science, 1(2),
233-238.
Lakatos, G., Soproni, K., Dka, A., & Miklsi, . (2009). A comparative approach to
dogs(Canis
familiaris) and human infants comprehension of various forms of pointing gestures.
Animal
cognition, 12(4), 621-631.
Paxton, D. W. (2000). A case for a naturalistic perspective. Anthrozos,13(1), 5-8.
Povinelli, D. J., Reaux, J. E., Bierschwale, D. T., Allain, A. D., & Simon, B. B. (1997).
Exploitation of
pointing as a referential gesture in young children, but not adolescent chimpanzees.
Cognitive
Development, 12(4), 423-461.
Povinelli, D. J., Bering, J. M., & Giambrone, S. (2003). Chimpanzee pointing: Another error of
the
argument by analogy. Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet, 35-68.
Soproni, K., Miklsi, ., Topl, J., & Csnyi, V. (2001). Comprehension of human
communicative
signs in pet dogs (Canis familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 115(2), 122.
Soproni, K., Miklsi, A., Topl, J., & Csnyi, V. (2002). Dogs'(Canis familaris)
responsiveness to human pointing gestures. Journal of comparative psychology,
116(1), 27.
Udell, M. A., Giglio, R. F., & Wynne, C. D. (2008). Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) use human
10
Figure 1 a
Dog 1
Sebastian, pug
Trial 1
Facing away
Correct
Incorrect
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Trial 2
Test 1
Incorrect
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Figure 1 b
11
Dog 2
Oman - Border
Collie - 1.5
years
Trial 1
Facing Away
Correct
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Trial 2
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Figure 1 c
Incorrect
Incorrect
12
Dog 3
Josie - 7 years
old - golden
retriever
Trial 1
Facing away
Correct
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Trial 2
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Incorrect
Incorrect
Figure 1 d
Dog 4
Maisy
Nova Scotia
Duck Tolling
Retriever
13
Trial 1
Facing Away
Correct
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Trial 1
Facing Away
Correct
Test 1
Incorrect
Incorrect
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Figure 1 e
Dog 5
Mutt (shepard,
boxer mix) - 5
years old
Trial 1
Facing Away
14
Correct
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Trial 2
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Incorrect
Incorrect