Summary: The ability to correctly identify dog emotions from their facial expressions appears to be influenced by a person’s age and prior experience with dogs.
This research found that adults and 6-year-olds were more accurate in recognizing aggressive expressions in dogs than 4-year-olds, regardless of whether they had pet dogs. Children were also more likely to perceive aggressive dog expressions as being more positive and less arousing than adults.
The study underscores the need for further exploration to enhance child-dog interactions and safety.
Key Facts:
- Adults and 6-year-olds recognized aggressive dog expressions more accurately than 4-year-olds, irrespective of their pet dog experience.
- Children perceived aggressive dog expressions as more positive and less arousing than adults did.
- The ability to accurately identify dog emotions may improve with age due to maturation of brain structures and more experience with dogs.
Source: PLOS
In a study of children and adults, both higher age and having had a pet dog were associated with better ability to recognize dog emotions from facial expressions.
Heini Törnqvist of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 26, 2023, showing 4-yr-olds were less able to recognize aggressive dog expressions than older children and adults.
Recognizing emotions from facial expressions is a key part of nonverbal communication between species. Prior research has suggested that 3- to 5-year-olds may be less able to recognize dogs’ emotions than older children and adults.
However, more research is needed to clarify the relationships between age, prior dog experience, and the ability to recognize dog emotions.
To help deepen understanding, Törnqvist and colleagues conducted a study involving 34 adults, 28 4-year-olds and 31 6-year-olds. All participants were asked to view images on a computer screen of various dog and human faces displaying different expressions.
The participants were then asked to rate each expression according to its level of happiness, anger, positivity, negativity, and amount of emotional arousal.
Overall, in line with prior research, people of all ages and prior dog experience—having had a pet dog in their family—gave roughly similar ratings of the images. Still, there were some statistical differences between the groups.
Regardless of pet dog experience, adults and 6-year-olds more often recognized aggressive dog faces correctly than 4-year-olds. However, 4- and 6-year-olds showed similar abilities in recognizing human expressions.
Compared to adult participants, children rated aggressive dog expressions as being more positive and having a lower level of arousal. Participants without pet dog experience rated aggressive dog expressions as being more positive than participants with dog experience.
Compared to aggressive human expressions, aggressive dog expressions were rated by children as being more positive and having lower arousal.
These findings suggest that people’s ability to recognize dog emotions, especially aggression, may improve with age, which could arise from both more experience with dogs and maturation of brain structures involved in recognizing expressions.
More research is needed to deepen these findings, which could also help inform efforts to improve the quality of interactions between children and dogs.
The authors add: “Aggressive dog expressions were especially rated incorrectly by 4-year-olds, and they rated aggressive dogs as significantly more positive and lower in arousal than adults.”
About this animal psychology research news
Author: Hanna Abdallah
Source: PLOS
Contact: Hanna Abdallah – PLOS
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Matters of development and experience: Evaluation of dog and human emotional expressions by children and adults” by Heini Törnqvist et al. PLOS ONE
Abstract
Matters of development and experience: Evaluation of dog and human emotional expressions by children and adults
Emotional facial expressions are an important part of across species social communication, yet the factors affecting human recognition of dog emotions have received limited attention.
Here, we characterize the recognition and evaluation of dog and human emotional facial expressions by 4-and 6-year-old children and adult participants, as well as the effect of dog experience in emotion recognition.
Participants rated the happiness, anger, valence, and arousal from happy, aggressive, and neutral facial images of dogs and humans. Both respondent age and experience influenced the dog emotion recognition and ratings.
Aggressive dog faces were rated more often correctly by adults than 4-year-olds regardless of dog experience, whereas the 6-year-olds’ and adults’ performances did not differ. Happy human and dog expressions were recognized equally by all groups.
Children rated aggressive dogs as more positive and lower in arousal than adults, and participants without dog experience rated aggressive dogs as more positive than those with dog experience. Children also rated aggressive dogs as more positive and lower in arousal than aggressive humans.
The results confirm that recognition of dog emotions, especially aggression, increases with age, which can be related to general dog experience and brain structure maturation involved in facial emotion recognition.
