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
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)?
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.