Dogs are seen as man's best friend. More often than not some owners claim to feel like their pet dogs truly understand them. It seems like their notions might not be completely ungrounded as recent studies show that dogs might after all recognize humans more than what was initially imagined
Researchers from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and University of Lincoln in the U.K. recently conducted a study using 17 untrained dogs. Their main goal was to figure out whether the dogs could detect the emotions that are flashed to them. The researchers used pictures of both humans and animals plus an audio sound for each emotion. The pictures show two emotion - one more calm and positive face and the other show an image of aggression and negativity.
Natalia De Souza Albuquerque, a PhD student in experimental psychology who is involved in the study has since explained the results of their experiment. According to Albuquerque, even dogs who were not familiar with any human words could assess the emotional content of human voices and faces.
"What we found is that when dogs were hearing positive sounds they would look longer to positive faces, both human and dog. And when they were listening to negative sounds they would look longer to negative, angry faces," explained Albuquerque.
Furthermore Dr. Kun Guo, from the University of Lincoln's School of Psychology, has also gushed about the results of their study. He claims that their experiment showed that dogs are capable of of integrating the senses of sight and hearing to form an understanding of the emotion they are perceiving.
"Dogs have the ability to integrate two different sources of sensory information into a coherent perception of emotion in both humans and dogs. To do so requires a system of internal categorization of emotional states" said Guo.
