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Fetching what the owner prefers? Dogs recognize disgust and happiness in human behaviour

Overview of attention for article published in Animal Cognition, July 2014
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (85th percentile)
  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (58th percentile)

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10 X users
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4 Facebook pages

Citations

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48 Dimensions

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128 Mendeley
Title
Fetching what the owner prefers? Dogs recognize disgust and happiness in human behaviour
Published in
Animal Cognition, July 2014
DOI 10.1007/s10071-014-0779-3
Pubmed ID
Authors

Borbála Turcsán, Flóra Szánthó, Ádám Miklósi, Enikő Kubinyi

Abstract

Research using the two-object choice paradigm showed that dogs prefer the object associated with the happy human emotion. However, they provided rather ambiguous results regarding the negative emotions. We assumed that differences between the dogs' and owners' interest towards the 'negative' object might be responsible for this. In our experiment, dogs observed their owner expressing different emotions towards two uniform plastic bottles. Five dog groups were tested based on the condition they received: (1) happy versus neutral, (2) happy versus disgust, (3) neutral versus disgust and (4-5) neutral vs neutral, as control groups. Contrary to previous studies using free choice paradigm, we used a task-driven approach. After the demonstration, the dogs had to retrieve one object to the owner. The dogs' performance in the two neutral-neutral groups did not differ from the chance level. In contrast, subjects were able to distinguish between the happy and neutral expression of the owner: they both approached and fetched the 'happy' object. In the happy-disgusted and neutral-disgusted groups, the dogs approached the bottles randomly, suggesting that they found the 'disgusting' and 'neutral' objects equally attractive. Nevertheless, the dogs preferentially retrieved the object marked with the relatively more positive emotion (happy or neutral) to the owner in both conditions. Our results demonstrate that dogs are able to recognize which is the more positive among two emotions, and in a fetching task situation, they override their own interest in the 'disgusting' object and retrieve what the owner prefers.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 10 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 128 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 3 2%
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Hungary 1 <1%
Germany 1 <1%
Unknown 122 95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 26 20%
Student > Bachelor 20 16%
Student > Master 17 13%
Researcher 14 11%
Student > Postgraduate 7 5%
Other 21 16%
Unknown 23 18%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 36 28%
Psychology 32 25%
Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine 5 4%
Computer Science 3 2%
Social Sciences 3 2%
Other 13 10%
Unknown 36 28%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 December 2023.
All research outputs
#3,819,254
of 25,513,063 outputs
Outputs from Animal Cognition
#657
of 1,573 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#36,320
of 242,434 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Animal Cognition
#16
of 36 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,513,063 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 85th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,573 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 36.0. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 58% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 242,434 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 58% of its contemporaries.