Siniscalchi Marcello, d'Ingeo Serenella, Quaranta Angelo
Department of Veterinary Medicine, Section of Behavioral Sciences and Animal Bioethics, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Strada Prov.le per Casamassima, Km 3, 70010, Valenzano, Italy.
Learn Behav. 2018 Dec;46(4):574-585. doi: 10.3758/s13420-018-0325-2.
Recent scientific literature shows that emotional cues conveyed by human vocalizations and odours are processed in an asymmetrical way by the canine brain. In the present study, during feeding behaviour, dogs were suddenly presented with 2-D stimuli depicting human faces expressing the Ekman's six basic emotion (e.g. anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, and neutral), simultaneously into the left and right visual hemifields. A bias to turn the head towards the left (right hemisphere) rather than the right side was observed with human faces expressing anger, fear, and happiness emotions, but an opposite bias (left hemisphere) was observed with human faces expressing surprise. Furthermore, dogs displayed higher behavioural and cardiac activity to picture of human faces expressing clear arousal emotional state. Overall, results demonstrated that dogs are sensitive to emotional cues conveyed by human faces, supporting the existence of an asymmetrical emotional modulation of the canine brain to process basic human emotions.
近期科学文献表明，犬类大脑以不对称方式处理人类发声和气味所传达的情感线索。在本研究中，在喂食行为期间，突然向狗呈现二维刺激物，这些刺激物描绘了表达埃克曼六种基本情绪（如愤怒、恐惧、快乐、悲伤、惊讶、厌恶和中性）的人类面孔，同时呈现到左、右视觉半视野中。观察到当面对表达愤怒、恐惧和快乐情绪的人类面孔时，狗有向左（右半球）转头而非向右侧转头的倾向，但当面对表达惊讶的人类面孔时则观察到相反的倾向（左半球）。此外，狗对表达明显唤醒情绪状态的人类面孔图片表现出更高的行为和心脏活动。总体而言，结果表明狗对人类面孔传达的情感线索敏感，支持犬类大脑存在不对称情感调节以处理基本人类情绪。
