Babies Are Capable of Discerning the Barking of Dogs

A new study shows that babies can understand the meaning of different barks - despite little or no previous exposure to dogs.

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU; Provo, UT, USA) conducted an experiment of perceptual narrowing and the effects of familiarity and experience in infants aged 6 to 24 months by studying if they could perceive the intermodal relationship between aggressive and nonaggressive canine vocalizations and the appropriate canine facial expressions. In the experiment, the infants simultaneously viewed static aggressive and nonaggressive photographic expressions of the same dog, and heard an aggressive or nonaggressive bark. In the next stage, the researchers then played (in random order) previously recorded sound clips of a friendly and an aggressive dog bark, and observed which photograph the infants observed.

The researchers found that while the recordings played, the 6-month-old babies spent most of their time staring at the appropriate picture, correctly interpreting the intermodal relationship for aggressive and nonaggressive barks. The results also revealed that in older infants, the initial or first looks were directed toward the appropriate expression and that older infants also looked proportionately longer to the incongruent expression during the latter half of the test trials. The study was published in the July 2009 issue of the in the journal Developmental Psychology.

"Emotion is one of the first things babies pick up on in their social world,” said lead author Ross Flom, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at BYU. "We chose dogs because they are highly communicative creatures both in their posture and the nature of their bark.”

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