Alarm or emotion? intranasal oxytocin helps determine information conveyed by dog barks for adult male human listeners.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Barks play an important role in interspecific communication between dogs and humans, by allowing a reliable perception of the inner state of dogs for human listeners. However, there is growing concern in society regarding the nuisance that barking dogs cause to the surrounding inhabitants. We assumed that at least in part, this nuisance effect can be explained by particular communicative functions of dog barks. In this study we experimentally tested two separate hypotheses concerning how the content of dog barks could affect human listeners. According to the first hypothesis, barks that convey negative inner states, would especially cause stress in human listeners due to the process called interspecific empathy. Based on the second hypothesis, alarm-type dog barks cause

SUBMITTER: Pongracz P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10789012 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature