Abstract
Safe human-dog relationships require understanding of dogs' signaling. As children are at particularly high risk of dog bites, we investigated longitudinally how children from 3 to 5 years and parents perceive and interpret dogs' distress signaling gestures. All participants were then taught how to link their perception of the dog with the correct interpretation of dogs' behavioral signals and tested again. Results show a significant increase in learning for children and adults, with them showing greater understanding of dogs' signaling after intervention. Better learning effects were found with increasing age and depended on the type of distress signaling of the dogs. Effects endured over time and it can be concluded that children and adults can be taught to interpret dogs' distress signaling more correctly. Awareness and recognition of dogs' stress signaling can be seen as an important first step in understanding the dog's perspective and are vital to enable safe interactions.
Highlights
Benefits of dog ownership include positive effects on human health and well-being and on child development and learning [see [1] for overview; for recent systematic reviews, see [2, 3]]
We have addressed the lack of knowledge and lack of systematic intervention with children and adults alike
We found a highly significant main effect of Age [F(2, 85) = 7.84, p < .001, partial η2 = .16] with older children showing more correct results than younger children
Summary
Benefits of dog ownership include positive effects on human health and well-being and on child development and learning [see [1] for overview; for recent systematic reviews, see [2, 3]]. Dogs function as social facilitators [4], assist in therapy, are used as co-visitors in retirement and care homes, in nurseries and in hospitals [1]. Pets are seen as friends, companions and social partners [5,6,7,8] and, increasingly, as family members [5, 6]. Dogs are among children’s favorite pets and children show most attraction to dogs, be it puppies or grown-up dogs, compared to other pets [9, 10]. The dog is the pet of choice in many pet-owning households in Europe and Canada, with even higher figures in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil [15]
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