Matching pictures with the appropriate sound:

results from an eye-tracking study of dogs and 14-month-old infants

2012.10.09

Anna Gergely1*

A. Hernádi2, E. Petró1, B. Miklósi1,

Á. Miklósi1, J. Topál2

1Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest2Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Hung. Acad. Sci., Budapest

*anna.gergely66@gmail.com

Domestic dogs (Domestic dogs (Canis familiarisCanis familiaris))

• Promising candidate for modelling human social behaviour (Topál 2009)

• Communicative signs: pointing (eg. Miklósi et al 2000), gaze following (Téglás et al 2012)

Domestication selection

Eye-tracking with dogsEye-tracking with dogs

• 1999 (Dell’Osso et al): restrict dogs’ head movements

•2010 (Mills et al): complex pre-training

•2012 (Téglás et al): without any restriction, training

Cross-modal matchingCross-modal matching

Integration of information coming from several sensory modalities is crucial for communication and individual recognition in many species (Bovet & Deputte 2009)

Auditory-visual intermodal matching-Humans: communication, categorical discrimination

Aim & QuestionsAim & Questions

2. Do dogs and human infants show more attention and preference towards pictures of conspecifics?

Simple picture-sound matching abilities: human & dog portraits bark & human voice1. Do (a) dogs and (b) 14-months old

infants show sound-image matching (gazing more at dog pic. the ‘barking’ condition and more at human portrait in the ‘human voice’ condition)?

MethodsMethods

1. Calibration

Subjects 27 adult pet dogs, 14 14 months old infants

2. Test trial

Data analysisData analysis

Variables1, Cumulative Accurancy: total looking time (milisecundum) in each AOI2, First look: first registrated looking data in AOI, difference score: number of first look at one of the AOIs/ 2

Areas of interests (AOI)Congruent areaIncongruent areaDogHuman

Results – DogsResults – DogsCummulative accurancyCummulative accurancy

Wilcoxon Matched pairs test

Ns p>0.05* p<0.05

N=27Df=25

Lookin

g t

ime m

ed

ian

± S

D (

mse

c) ns *

Preference Matching

Results – DogsResults – DogsFirst lookFirst look

Wilcoxon Matched pairs test

Ns p>0.05* p<0.05

N=27Df=25

Diff

ere

nce

sco

re

*ns

Preference Matching

Results – InfantsResults – InfantsCummulative Cummulative

accurancyaccurancy

Paired t- test

** p<0.01* p<0.05

N=17Df=16

** *

Lookin

g t

ime m

ean

± S

E (

mse

c)

Preference Matching

Results – InfantsResults – InfantsFirst lookFirst look

* ns

Diff

ere

nce

sco

re

Wilcoxon Matched pairs test

Ns p>0.05* p<0.05

N=17Df=15

Preference Matching

Dogs show sophisticated ability to match auditory and visual stimuli

‘Matching ability’

ConclusionsConclusions

Infants also showed some evidence of matching

ConclusionsConclusions

Unlike dogs, infants showed a striking preference for dog image

‘Spontaneous preference’

novelty/attractivity effect; the ‘novelty value’ and/or the attractivity of an unfamiliar dog image may be higher than that of the unfamiliar human.

Thank you for your Thank you for your attention!attention!

This research is supported by SNFS Sinergia project “Swarmix” (CRSI22-133059)