Matters of development and experience: Evaluation of dog and human emotional expressions by children and adults

Autor(en)

Heini Törnqvist, Hanna Höller, Kerstin Vsetecka, Stefanie Hoehl, Miiamaaria V. Kujala

Abstrakt

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.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Psychologie der Entwicklung und Bildung

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Jyväskylä

Journal

PLoS ONE

Band

18

ISSN

1932-6203

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288137

Publikationsdatum

07-2023

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

501005 Entwicklungspsychologie

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/ef90cfb0-d6ad-40e1-bacc-47b4c502d0a0