Dogs can infer implicit information from human emotional expressions.

ABSTRACT: The ability to infer emotional states and their wider consequences requires the establishment of relationships between the emotional display and subsequent actions. These abilities, together with the use of emotional information from others in social decision making, are cognitively demanding and require inferential skills that extend beyond the immediate perception of the current behaviour of another individual. They may include predictions of the significance of the emotional states being expressed. These abilities were previously believed to be exclusive to primates. In this study, we presented adult domestic dogs with a social interaction between two unfamiliar people, which could be positive, negative or neutral. After passively witnessing the actors engaging silently with each other

SUBMITTER: Albuquerque N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8940826 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature