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Children and Dogs: how do children interpret dog behaviour

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Children and Dogs: how do children interpret dog
behaviour
N.N. Lakestani

A commonly suggested reason for the occurrence of dog bites is miscommunication

between humans and dogs (Overall & Love, 2001; Wright, 1985). Humans may fail
to understand the communication signals displayed by the dog, they therefore may
not be able to respond appropriately, which results in the dog biting. This is,
however, only a hypothesis. There is little or no information on whether
miscommunication is actually one of the causes of dog bite accidents. Several studies
have examined the circumstances of accidents and the characteristics of the victims
but there does not seem to be any evidence as to what really is the cause (Beck,
Loring, & Lockwood, 1975; Guy et al., 2001; Millot, Filiatre, Cagnon, Eckerlin, &
Montagner, 1988; Patrick & O'Rourke, 1998). There are a few studies investigating
how people interact with dogs (Millot, 1994; Millot, Filiatre, Cagnon, Eckerlin, &
Montagner, 1988; Millot & Filiatre, 1986). However, these do not investigate how
people interpret the behaviour of dogs.

If miscommunication is the cause, or one of the causes, of dog bite accidents, then
people who are bitten would be expected not to be able to interpret the behaviour of
dogs. It is therefore interesting to investigate the relationship between the ability to
interpret dog behaviour and the likelihood of being bitten. Fear seems to be a
common reason for which a dog will bite (Askew, 1996; Galac & Knol, 1997). Not
being able to interpret the state of a dog, such as friendliness, aggression or fear, may
therefore increase the likelihood of getting bitten. Previous research reports that
children are more at risk of being bitten by dogs. It can be hypothesised that children
are less good than adults at interpreting dog behaviour and that is why they are bitten
more often.

The ability to interpret the state of dogs may be related to the ability to interpret
emotions in humans. The interpretation of emotions by children is very important for
their development, creating bonds with the mother and regulation of their own
emotions (Walden & Baxter, 1989). By correctly interpreting emotions in their
mothers, infants learn how to respond appropriately and how to regulate their own
emotions. Humans are predisposed to learn how to interpret emotions and the
miscommunication with dogs may be caused by the differences in which different
states are expressed. For example, dogs display friendliness by wagging their tail,
jumping and searching contact, while happiness in humans is displayed mainly by
smiling (Ekman, 1982; Serpell, 1995).

Recognition of emotions is a process that develops gradually in children. From a

very young age children are able to recognise certain emotions (such as happiness or
anger) and the ability to recognise more complex emotions (such as fear and
surprise) appears later (Boyatzis, Chazan, & Ting, 1993; Walden & Field, 1982).
Because the ability to recognise emotions in humans is a gradual process in children,
similarly interpreting emotional states of dogs may also be a gradual process. This
may, as a consequence, influence the way they interact with dogs.
How do children interpret dog behaviour?
A study which involved interviewing 430 schools children between 4 and 10 years of
age and 169 Undergraduate University students in Italy, Spain and Scotland was
carried out. Each child was shown 12 short video clips of dogs performing normal
behaviours (e.g. greeting, fear, aggression) and asked how the dog was feeling (i.e.
happy, sad, scared, angry) and to explain what led them to think that the dog was
feeling that way (e.g. body actions, behaviours).

As expected, the ability to correctly interpret the behaviour of dogs increased with
age. Children under four years of age were found to be less good than older children
and adults at interpreting the behaviour of the dog, especially for friendly and fearful
dogs. However, it should be noted that overall the participants correctly identified the
states of the dogs. This fortunately shows that in most cases children are good at
reading dogs’ behaviour which is in agreement with the finding that only 11% of
people get bitten.

The results of the study suggest that the reason why children are less good at
interpreting the state of dogs is because of the features of the dog they attend to in
order to decide on the state of the dog. This was measured by asking the participants
to report which features of the dogs they were attending to after they had identified
the state of the dog. Younger children tended to look at the face of the dog in order to
interpret the behaviour of fearful and friendly dogs. However, they should have been
looking at the tail and the ears and the general posture of the dogs. Recognising fear
in dogs may be complex for younger children because the expression of fear is
different from humans. Dogs display fear mainly by trying to get away or standing
still if they cannot get away, tucking the tail between their legs and pushing the ears
down against their head (Case, 2005; Serpell, 1995). Humans may also use flight,
moving backwards and bowing (De Meijer, 1989) but as with the other emotions
facial expression also provides important cues, such as raised brows, widened eyes,
lips drawn down and back (Marsh, Adams, & Kleck, 2005). Therefore if the
participants were trying to interpret the state of the dog by looking at its face they
were more likely to give an incorrect answer, and in fact both children and adults
who gave the wrong answer reported attending to the face of the dogs more than to
other features.

Most participants correctly identified the state of the defensive dogs. This may be
due to the similarities in expressing anger/aggression in dogs and humans. In both
species aggressive behaviour is associated with showing teeth and loud vocalisations.
There was, however, a difference in the way children and adults interpreted the state
of the dogs. The dogs used in the videos were displaying aggression as a result of
fear and this was visible particularly in one out of the three aggressive defensive dog
videos (Bedlington cross) where the dog, as well as barking and growling, was
backing up and trying to hide behind his owner. Therefore both “the dog is angry”
and “the dog is scared” were correct answers for these three videos. Few of the
children’s answers corresponded to the dog looks scared while 42% of the adult’s
answers corresponded to the dog looks scared. Most of these answers were given in
response to the video of the Bedlington cross, 74% of the adult’s responses to that
video were “the dog looks sad/scared” while for the other two videos 70% and 85%
of the responses were the dog looks angry. There was no such distinction in the
children’s answers, although they did tend to report that the dog looked scared a little
more for the video of the Bedlington cross.

The results, therefore, suggest that children as young as four years of age are capable
of recognising aggressive behaviour in dogs but not the underlying fearful behaviour.
Research on the identification of emotions through vocal cues in humans suggests
that anger may be the first emotion to be recognised by children when assessing
human emotions (Hortacsu & Ekinci, 1992). Therefore, it may be that children were
better at recognising angry dogs because they were making a noise whereas the
fearful and friendly dogs were silent. In fact 90% of the children who recognised that
the dogs were angry reported that they were attending to the sound it was making.
On the other hand children and adults who recognised that the dog was sad/scared
reported that the dog was backing up more than they reported other features. The
defensive aggressive dogs were displaying mixed emotions and even though children
as young as five years old can identify mixed emotions in very specific conditions
(Kestenbaum & Gelman, 1995), children up to the age of 10 generally deny that
mixed emotions can occur (Harris, 1983; Meerum Terwogt, Koops, Oosterhoff, &
Olthof, 1986). This is thought to be caused by the fact that younger children tend to
focus on single rather than multiple features to interpret emotions (Diamond &
Carey, 1977; Kestenbaum, 1992). The present study supports these results, in that
younger children reported fewer dog features than older children and adults. The
adults recognised that the dogs were displaying fear because they could accept that
the animal may display mixed emotions and that although it was barking and being
aggressive this was due to a fearful state.

In addition, children seemed to be attracted to the most salient feature of the dogs
rather than the most relevant feature necessary to interpret the state of the dog
correctly. Young children were good at identifying defensive dogs probably because
the most salient feature was the sound the dog was making, which happened to be the
correct feature to attend to in order to recognise that the dog was angry. Defensive
aggressive dogs were correctly recognised as “angry” by most participants (children
and adults). It may be that the reason why participants were good at identifying the
state of defensive aggressive dogs was that the expression of anger in dogs is similar
to that in humans. In both species aggressive behaviour is associated with showing
teeth and loud vocalisations.

The results from this study have suggested that overall children are quite good at
recognising aggressive dogs and that they are less good at recognising friendly and
fearful ones. Therefore, we could assume they would be able to avoid an aggressive
dog, as they recognise it is being aggressive, and the fact that they are not very good
at recognising friendly dogs is not potentially dangerous because whether they decide
to approach the dog or not, the dog is unlikely to attack them since it is being
friendly. The situation would be different if they were presented with a fearful dog.
If a child is unable to correctly identify a fearful dog and decides to approach a
scared dog who is trying to escape but cannot do it, this can result in the dog biting
because it has no other way to avoid the fearful stimulus (Case, 2005). The results
showed that a dog displaying fear is more likely to be labelled as happy by four year
old children than by older children and adults. If the child thinks that the dog is
happy rather than scared it may be more inclined to approach it. Four year old
children reported looking at the face of the dogs more than 10 year old children. A
number of the younger children commented on one of the videos that because the
dog was panting it meant it was happy, but they did not seem to notice that the dog
was actually shaking. Again this supports the hypothesis that younger children look
at single features. On the other hand the 10 year old children may have noticed that
the dog was panting but they had also noticed that the dog was shivering and
therefore were more likely to recognise that the dog was scared.

Children are drawn towards the face from a very young age. Children as young as
seven months of age can discriminate basic emotional expressions on the basis of
facial expression (Kestenbaum & Nelson, 1990). When interpreting human facial
expressions younger children tend to focus on single features (Kestenbaum &
Gelman, 1995). It is therefore not surprising that younger children (four and six year
olds) reported looking at fewer features and more at the face of the dogs than older
children and adults in order to decide the state of the dog. Reporting the face
decreased with age and it significantly dropped between the ages of four and six.
From eight year olds onward the participants attended to the face almost equally as
age increased, however movement was reported increasingly suggesting that with
age the focus of attention was moved from the face to the movement of the dogs
which is a more reliable cue for correctly interpreting the social signals displayed by
the dogs. In addition, adults reported attending to the tail of the dog more than the
children. The tail is a very important feature for social signalling in dogs and the
children reported it less frequently than any of the other features. Dogs use their tail
to display different states. When fearful, the tail will be tucked down between the
legs, when friendly, the dog will wag its tail loosely, while when displaying
aggression the tail will be held stiff and upright while wagging (Serpell, 1995).

Conclusion

The body language of dogs is not the same as humans, facial expression is not an
important part as it is in humans. By looking more at the face of the dog rather than
at its posture children can easily be misunderstand what the dog is trying to
communicate to them. This is particularly dangerous when a child is confronted with
a fearful dog: the child sees a nice looking dog and wants to hug or pet it, but the dog
is scared or anxious and might respond by biting as a defence mechanism.

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