![]() ![]() If social play occurred, the attentive owners continued to offer eye contact and verbal praise but did not pet or make other physical contact with the dogs. They didn’t offer toys, attempt to wrestle or chase the dogs, or give other play-associated cues. Though the owners in the present-and-attentive condition were friendly with the dogs, they didn’t encourage play in any way. These data showed that they played most when their owners were both present and attentive. The videos were then analyzed to determine the amount of time the dogs engaged in social play behavior. People offered their dogs attention in three ways: making eye contact with them, petting them and praising them using an upbeat tone of voice.įor the research, pairs of dogs were videotaped in their own homes three times for five minutes each, in each of the three following situations: The owner was (1) in another room (absent), (2) in the room with the dogs but totally focused on a book or laptop and making no eye contact or social overtures (present but inattentive) or (3) in the room with the dogs making eye contact as well as offering verbal praise and petting (present and attentive). In the current study, researchers investigated the effect of human attention as well as human presence on canine play. However, these studies did not control for human attention they only factored in human presence. A 2007 study showed that most play occurs in familiar settings when a human is also present, and a 2014 study found that wolves and wolf-dog hybrids played more when people were present. The study reported on in the journal Animal Cognition, “ Owner attention facilitates social play in dog–dog dyads ( Canis lupus familiaris): evidence for an interspecific audience effect” is the first to directly evaluate an audience’s effects on canine play.ĭogs have previously been shown to be affected by human attention in other contexts, and by the attention of canine play partners. There’s always great interest in anything related to canine play, not the least because it’s fun to watch. Predictably, there’s great interest in a new study showing that dogs play more when their owners are paying attention to them. Even so, it’s intriguing to learn that being observed by people has a strong effect on one of their species-typical behaviors-in this case, play. We know that dogs care about people paying attention to them, and we know that dogs generally enjoy human attention. ![]()
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