Interpretation of Dog Behavior by Children and Young Adults

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Interpretation of Dog Behavior by Children

and Young Adults
a b c
Nelly N. Lakestani , Morag L. Donaldson & Natalie Waran
a
Psychology Department, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
b
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of
Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
c
Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh, Roslin,
UK
Published online: 28 Apr 2015.
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To cite this article: Nelly N. Lakestani, Morag L. Donaldson & Natalie Waran (2014) Interpretation of Dog
Behavior by Children and Young Adults, Anthrozoös: A multidisciplinary journal of the interactions of people
and animals, 27:1, 65-80
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Interpretation of Dog
Behavior by Children and
Young Adults
Downloaded by [University of Georgia] at 21:14 11 August 2015
Nelly N. Lakestani*, Morag L. Donaldson† and

Natalie Waran‡
*Psychology Department, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
†School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University
of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
‡Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh,
Roslin, UK
Address for correspondence: ABSTRACT This study investigates people’s ability to interpret dog be-
Nelly N. Lakestani,
Psychology Department, havior. Inability to interpret dog behavior correctly may be a factor con-
University of Lincoln, tributing to young children’s higher likelihood of being bitten by dogs.
Brayford Pool, Children (4- to 10-year-olds) and adults (total n = 550) watched videos of
Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK.
E-mail: dogs displaying friendly, aggressive, and fearful behavior. They were asked
nelly.lakestani@gmail.com to interpret the dogs’ behaviors and to describe which features they had at-
tended to in making their decision. Four- and 6-year-old children were un-
able to identify fearful dogs, while participants in all age groups were
Anthrozoös DOI: 10.2752/175303714X13837396326413

capable of identifying friendly and aggressive behavior (p < 0.001). Misin-
terpretations of fearful behavior were significantly associated with reports of
attending to the dog’s face rather than other features (2 = 80.2, df = 1,
p < 0.001). Four-year-olds were particularly likely to report looking at the
dog’s face and together with 6-year-olds they focused more on one feature
rather than multiple features in order to make their decisions. The results
show that younger children are less good at interpreting dog behavior, and
that they are particularly poor at recognizing fear in dogs, while aggression
is the most readily recognized behavior. Children’s lower ability to interpret
dog behavior seems to be due to the features they focus on. Younger chil-
dren appear to focus on the dogs’ most salient features and not the fea-
tures that would allow them to correctly interpret the dogs’ behavior. For
example, 4- and 6-year-olds tended to report attending to the fearful dog’s
face rather than its tail and general posture. The results suggest it would be
beneficial to include information about how to interpret dog behavior in
dog-bite prevention programs.
Keywords: children, dog, dog-bite prevention, emotion recognition

65
Interpretation of Dog Behavior by Children and Young Adults
❖
Dogs are among people’s favorite pets (Albert and Bulcroft 1988; Hart 1995) and
have evolved alongside humans for hundreds of thousands of years (Villa et al. 1997).
Dogs and humans are both social animals that seem to have many commonalities,
making dogs such popular partners for humans. Despite having evolved alongside each other,
and despite the fact that dogs and humans have similar social systems and communicate
well together, there still are instances in which communication seems to be a problem, in par-
ticular between children and dogs. For example, many dog-bite accidents are thought to hap-
pen because people misinterpret dog behavior (Overall and Love 2001). Various sources report
that children under 12 years of age are particularly at risk of suffering from serious injury from
dog bites, although these vary regarding the age at which they report that children are more
at risk of suffering from dog-bite accidents (e.g., Beck, Loring and Lockwood 1975; Beck and
Jones 1985; Ozanne-Smith, Asby and Stathakis 2001; Bernardo et al. 2002; DeKeuster,
Lamoureux and Khan 2006; Schalamon et al. 2006). However, younger children can be as-
sumed to suffer from more serious injuries since they account for a larger proportion of victims
recorded in hospitals (e.g., Ozanne-Smith, Asby and Stathakis 2001; Bernardo et al. 2002;
Schalamon et al. 2006). Children may be expected to suffer from more serious injuries because
they are more fragile than adults. They may therefore tend to be overrepresented in studies
based on hospital admissions. But even studies based on telephone surveys, on random
samples, showed that children were more likely to be bitten than adults (Beck and Jones
1985; Sacks, Kresnow and Houston 1996; Kahn, Bauche and Lamoureux 2003; DeKeuster,
Lamoureux and Kahn 2006). This suggests that the gravity of injuries is not the reason why
children are reported to be more at risk of suffering from dog bites.
There is little information on how well people are able to interpret dog behavior and which
cues they use in doing this. Studying how children of different ages and adults interpret dog
behavior would give information on whether young children tend to misinterpret dog be-
havior and on whether this could be relevant to them being at increased risk of serious in-
jury from dog bites. This would contribute to the prevention of dog bite accidents which are
detrimental to the welfare of people who are victims of these accidents but also to the wel-
fare of dogs who may be given away or destroyed after biting. Few published studies in-
vestigated how people interpret the behavior of dogs and most investigated adults’ abilities
(Tami and Gallager 2009; Walker et al. 2010; Pongrácz et al. 2011). One of these studies,
investigating adults’ ability to interpret dog behavior from soundless videos, showed that
fear, friendliness, and play solicitation were the most easily recognized behaviors, while ag-
gression, confidence, and play were more difficult (Tami and Gallagher 2009). Although these
video clips were presented without sound, sound is an important communication tool for
both humans and dogs, and is therefore necessary for correctly interpreting certain behav-
iors (De Silva, Miyasato and Nakatsu 1998). In fact, the only study, to the authors’ knowl-
edge, investigating children’s ability to understand dog behavior, showed that when children
are asked to interpret dog barks, the type that they recognized the best was the sound of
a dog barking toward a stranger, which they labeled as “angry” (Pongrácz et al. 2011).
Anthrozoös
Research on children’s interpretation of human emotions shows similar results whereby

some emotions are better recognized than others depending on the stimuli used (Hortacsu
and Ekinci 1992; Boyatzis, Chazan and Ting 1993).
The main aim of the current study was to investigate whether the ability to interpret simple
dog behavioral states differs among participants of different age groups, in order to contribute
66
to the development of dog-bite prevention programs for children. We focused on children and
Lakestani et al.
how this ability develops by comparing children of different age groups (4-, 6-, 8- and 10-year-
olds) as well as young adults on a task where they were presented with videos of dogs display-
ing different behaviors/emotional states, and were asked to identify the dog’s emotional state. As
part of this, we looked into which features of the dogs’ behavior the participants reported at-
tending to when deciding about the state of the dog. As opposed to the studies described above
which either used soundless videos or dog barks without images of dogs as stimuli, in the pres-
ent study videos including sound were used. Videos of dogs with sound are more of a “real life”
representation of the dogs’ behavior and therefore the types of dog behaviors that are more
readily recognized may differ from previous studies, since both stimuli were present contempo-
raneously. The hypothesis was that the ability to correctly interpret dog behavior would increase
with age, as does the ability to recognize emotions in humans (Clarke-Stwart, Friedman and
Koch 1985; Boyatzis, Chazan and Ting 1993). The effect of previous experience with animals
(i.e., pet ownership) on participants’ ability to interpret dog behavior was also investigated. Finally,
for the purpose of contributing to the prevention of dog bite accidents, the performance of victims
of dog-bite accidents was compared with that of non-victims, in order to investigate if the abil-
ity to interpret dog behavior was related to being a victim of dog bites or not.
Methods
Participants
There were 430 children in total, comprised of 107 4-year-olds (mean age = 4.5 years, SD =
0.4), 105 6-year-olds (mean age 6.5, SD = 0.5), 109 8-year-olds (mean age 8.5, SD = 0.4) and
109 10-year-olds (mean age 10.4, SD = 0.4). The children were attending nurseries or schools
in Milan (141 children), Barcelona (161), or Edinburgh (128). There were 201 girls and 229 boys
in total, composed of 56 4-year-old girls (Italy = 18, Spain = 23, UK = 15) and 51 4-year-old boys
(Italy = 15, Spain = 18, UK = 19); 49 6-year-old girls (Italy = 17, Spain = 28, UK = 14) and 56
6-year-old boys (Italy = 18, Spain = 21, UK = 17); 53 8-year-old girls (Italy = 17, Spain = 21, UK
= 15) and 56 8-year-old boys (Italy = 17, Spain = 21, UK = 18); and 43 10-year-old girls (Italy =
18, Spain = 11, UK = 14) and 66 10-year-old boys (Italy = 21, Spain = 29, UK = 16).
The young adult group was composed of 120 university undergraduate students (mean
age 21.3, SD = 1.9), of whom 98 were women and 22 men. They were in their first or second
year of studying psychology in the University of Milan (41 participants, mean age 21.4), the
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (39 participants, mean age 22.0), or the University of
Edinburgh (40 participants, mean age 20.3).
Twenty-one percent of the participants owned a dog, while a further 32% owned other pets
(e.g., cat, hamster, fish, guinea pig) and the remaining 47% did not own any pets.
Materials
The materials consisted of nine video clips, each lasting between five and 11 seconds. The
videos were composed of dogs of different breeds displaying different types of behav-
iors/emotional states: friendly, aggressive, fearful. Only one dog was present in each clip (see
Anthrozoös
Appendix 1 for descriptions of clips). There were three clips of each behavior: three friendly-
dog clips, three aggressive-dog clips and three fearful-dog clips.
The nine clips were selected by presenting a larger set of 12 clips to three professional pet
counselors and four veterinary behaviorists and asking them to rate the dogs’ behavioral and
emotional states. The ratings were free-response, in that the raters were asked to write down
what behavior they thought the dog was displaying, without being given a list of alternatives
67
to choose from. The videos that were rated as ambiguous or for which the raters’ descriptions
did not match were excluded, leaving nine clips on which the raters agreed about the dogs’
emotional state. For the videos of aggressive dogs, many raters reported that the dogs were
defensive and/or displayed fear, as well as aggression. We decided to label these as “ag-
gressive” dogs because even though aggression may be displayed in many different contexts
and because of different causes, it is often displayed because of fear. The videos were therefore
considered to adequately represent aggressive dogs behaving so due to fear.
Procedure
At the start of each session with the children, the researcher showed them four cartoon-style
drawings depicting happy, sad, scared, and angry facial expressions, and asked what they
thought they meant, to check that the emotions were recognized correctly. The researcher
then showed the children each video clip in turn and asked “How is this dog feeling?” and gave
them the choice between “happy,” “sad,” “scared,” “angry,” or “I don’t know.” The drawings
were used as props to make the task more accessible for the children, and the 4- and 6-year-
olds were allowed to indicate their response by pointing to a drawing if they were too shy to
respond verbally. For each video clip, after the children had judged how the dog was feeling,
they were asked: “How do you know it’s feeling that way?”
Each child was shown the videos individually on a computer in a quiet room. The video clips
were shown in a different random sequence for each child. The children were asked the ques-
tions verbally and their answers for each video were written down.
The adults were shown the videos in groups (varying between three and 50 in size) in a
classroom where the videos were projected on a big screen. The videos were shown in a dif-
ferent sequence for each group, and the participants were given a response sheet containing
written versions of the questions, to fill in independently after watching each video clip.
The parents of all the children interviewed were asked to fill in a consent form prior to the
interview. The form also included questions on whether they had a pet in the family (both past
and present) and whether the child had been bitten by a dog in the past. The adults were given
a similar questionnaire, which they completed and returned before the videos were shown.
Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the School of Philosophy,
Psychology and Language Sciences of the University of Edinburgh.
Data Analysis
Responses to the question “How is the dog feeling?” were assigned to one of five categories:
happy, sad, scared, angry, or I don’t know. The “I don’t know” answers were considered as
missing responses and excluded from the analyses. These responses were more frequent for
adults than for children and are likely to mainly reflect extraneous variables. Responses to the
question “How do you know it’s feeling that way?” were assigned to one of four categories,
depending on which aspects of the dog’s features or actions were referred to: move-
ment/posture, sound, tail or face. The details of the different variables in each category are in
Appendix 1. Participants were allowed to report more than one feature, therefore the data
Anthrozoös
were analyzed with chi-square tests on the actual number of features reported per age group
and not per person.
The three dog behavioral states examined in this study were aggressive, fearful, and friendly,
and each of these was represented by three videos. The results were analyzed separately for
each dog state by summing the answers of participants to the three relevant videos. For
68
responses to the question “How is the dog feeling?” the participants’ answer “happy” was
Lakestani et al.
considered a match to the raters’ response “friendly,” and the response “scared” was con-
sidered a match to the raters’ response “fearful.” For the videos of aggressive dogs, the par-
ticipants’ answer “angry” was considered a match to the raters’ response “aggressive,” and
therefore considered a “correct” answer. The answer “scared” was also considered correct,
as it was associated with what the raters referred to as “fearful.” The answer “sad” was con-
sidered incorrect in all instances. The participants were offered the possibility to answer “sad”
to investigate whether participants, and children in particular, would attribute this state to
dogs and in which conditions. It should be noted, as Pongrácz et al. (2011) emphasized in
their study, that when our participants categorized the dogs as happy, scared, or angry, it
does not necessarily mean that the dogs were exactly in these inner states as we would
attribute them to humans. Rather these words were used to make sure that children would
understand the task, and to our knowledge the best associations were scared with fear,
angry/scared with aggression, and happy with friendliness.
Goodness of fit chi-square tests were carried out for each age group and for each type of
dog behavior, to investigate if their responses (correct and incorrect) were significantly differ-
ent from chance. Chi-square analyses were used to investigate associations between the ac-
curacy of emotional state judgments (correct and incorrect) and the features of the dogs’
behavior that participants reported attending to for each of their responses (face, movement,
sound, or tail). The number of features reported by participants of different age groups were
compared by using Mann-Whitney U tests. Associations between pet ownership (dog owner,
other pet owner, no pet) and the accuracy of interpretation of dog behavior (correct and in-
correct) were also investigated with chi-square tests, as were associations between having
been a victim of dog bites (victim and non-victim) and accuracy of interpretation of dog
behavior (correct and incorrect).
Results
Interpretation of Dog Behavior
Overall, 65% of the participants’ responses to the question “How is the dog feeling?” were cor-
rect, which is significantly above chance level (goodness-of-fit 2 = 382.4, df = 1, p < 0.001).
The percentage of correct interpretations of the dogs’ behavior increased with age: 46% of the
answers were correct for 4-year-olds, 58% for 6-year-olds, 65% for 8-year-olds, 73% for 10-
year-olds and 87% for the adults. For all age groups, the percentage of correct responses
was highest in the defensive aggressive condition and lowest in the fearful condition, with the
friendly condition being intermediate. Overall, 92% of participants’ responses corresponded
to correctly interpreting the behavior of the aggressive dogs, 57% to correctly interpreting the
behavior of friendly dogs, and 41% to correctly interpreting the behavior of fearful dogs.
Accuracy of Interpretations of Dog Behavior in Different Age Groups: The percentage of cor-
rect interpretations of the dogs’ behavior increased with age, from 46% for the 4-year-olds to
87% for the adults. Goodness-of-fit chi-square tests carried out for each age group sepa-
Anthrozoös
rately (see Table 1) show that performance was significantly different from chance level for all
age groups, with 6-, 8-, 10-year-olds, and adults giving a majority of correct answers, and 4-
year-olds a majority of incorrect answers (4-year-olds: 2 = 58.3, df = 1, p < 0.001, 6-year-olds:
2 = 213.7, df = 1, p < 0.001; 8-year-olds: 2 = 387.5, df = 1, p < 0.001; 10-year-olds: 2 =
624.7, df = 1, p < 0.001; adults: 2 = 1000.3, df = 1, p < 0.001). This was calculated by tak-
ing into account that participants had two chances out of four to give correct answers for the
69
Table 1. Goodness of fit chi-square tests comparing the number of correct and incorrect
responses for participants in each age group and for the different dog states.
Age Response Observed Expected
Group Number of Percentage Number of
Responses Per Age Responses Chi-Square
4 yr Scared 55 20% 68.8 2 = 4.3, df = 1, p < 0.05
Angry, sad, happy 220 80% 206.3
6 yr Scared 79 31% 64.8 Not significant
Fearful Dog Videos

8 yr Scared 100 36% 68.5 2 = 19.3, df = 1, p < 0.001
10 yr Scared 142 52% 68.5 2 = 105.2, df = 1, p < 0.001

Adults Scared 159 73% 54.5 2 = 267.2, df = 1, p < 0.001
4 yr Happy 105 38% 69.8 2 = 23.7, df = 1, p < 0.001
Angry, sad, scared 174 62% 209.3
6 yr Happy 115 44% 65.3 2 = 50.6, df = 1, p < 0.001
Friendly Dog Videos

8 yr Happy 163 59% 69.3 2 = 169.2, df = 1, p < 0.001
10 yr Happy 187 66% 70.8 2 = 254.7, df = 1, p < 0.001
Adults Happy 200 83% 60.3 2 = 432.2, df = 1, p < 0.001
4 yr Angry + scared 233 77% 150.5 2 = 90.5, df = 1, p < 0.001
Happy + sad 68 23% 150.5
Aggressive Dog Videos

Happy + sad 24 8% 153.5
8 yr Angry + scared 311 94% 165.0 2 = 258.4, df = 1. p < 0.001
Happy + sad 19 6% 165.0
Happy + sad 18 5% 181.0
Adults Angry + scared 318 99% 160.5 2 = 309.1, df = 1, p < 0.001
Happy + sad 3 1% 160.5
Anthrozoös
videos of aggressive dogs (both scared and angry were counted as correct) and one chance
out of four for videos of fearful and friendly dogs. A significant association was found between
age and the number of correct and incorrect answers given (2 = 346, df = 4,
p < 0.001). The data were further analyzed with 2 2 chi-square tests comparing perform-
ance within each adjacent pair of age groups; a Bonferroni correction was applied and
70
significance was set at p < 0.0125. Four-year-olds gave fewer correct answers than
Lakestani et al.
Friendly Dogs' Aggressive Dogs'

Fearful Dogs' Videos Videos Videos
States
100 attributed
to dogs
Percentage of Correct Answers
happy
80 scared
angry
60
40
b
a
20
0
4-year-olds
6-year-olds
8-year-olds
10-year-olds
adults
4-year-olds
6-year-olds
8-year-olds
10-year-olds
adults
4-year-olds
6-year-olds
8-year-olds
10-year-olds
adults
Figure 1. Correct responses (as percentage of total responses) per age
group for each emotional state. a: significantly more incorrect answers
than expected by chance (chi-square p < 0.05). b: no significant differ-
ence from chance, children answered at random. All the others: correct
answers given at more than chance level (chi-square p < 0.001).
6-year-olds (2 =23.1, df = 1, p < 0.001), 8-year-olds gave fewer correct answers than
10-year-olds (2 = 13.6, df = 1, p < 0.001), and 10-year-olds gave fewer correct answers than
adults (2 =47.7, df = 1, p < 0.001) (see Figure 1). No significant difference was found between
children or adults from different countries.
Accuracy of Interpretations of Dog Behavior According to the Type of Behavior Displayed by the
Dog: The accuracy of participants’ interpretations of the dogs’ behaviors varied according to
the behavior displayed in the videos. For all age groups, the percentage of correct responses
was highest in the aggressive condition and lowest in the fearful condition, with the friendly con-
dition being intermediate (Figure 1). Despite these variations across emotional states, perform-
ance was above chance level for almost all combinations of age groups and emotional states,
meaning that the participants did not usually respond by chance. The only exceptions to this
were for the 4-year-olds and the 6-year-olds interpreting the behaviors of fearful dogs. The
Anthrozoös
4-year-olds’ performance was significantly lower than chance (2 = 4.3, df = 1, p < 0.05), with
only 20% correct, bearing in mind that in this condition there was a one in four probability (25%)
of giving the correct answer by chance. The 6-year-olds’ performance was not significantly
different from chance, with only 30% of their responses being correct, suggesting that they
were answering at random and did not know the answer. The answer given most often by
71
4-year-old children watching videos of fearful dogs was “the dog is happy” (41%), compared
with “the dog is sad” (30%), “the dog is scared” (20%), and “the dog is angry” (9%). “The dog
is happy” was also the answer given the most by 6-year-old children (39%), compared with “the
dog is scared” (31%), “the dog is sad” (27%), and “the dog is angry” (3%). Participants in other
age groups said that the dogs were “scared” more often than any other response. “The dog
is angry” was the least frequently given answer for all age groups.
In all the other conditions, participants of all age groups were capable of correctly inter-
preting the dogs’ behavior, as indicated by their correct responses being significantly higher
than expected by chance (p < 0.001 level; Table 1). For the videos where the professionals de-
scribed the dogs as “friendly,” the participants’ response “happy” was considered a correct re-
sponse. Participants of all age groups reported significantly more “happy” answers than
expected by chance (Table 1). Forty percent of 4-year-olds’ and 44% of 6-year-olds’ responses
were that the dog looked happy, compared with between 59% and 83% of older children’s and
adults’ responses. Even though younger children’s responses were below 50%, these were
higher than expected by chance, as they had one chance out of four to give the correct an-
swer, suggesting that younger children have some ability to identify friendly dogs even if they
are less competent than older children and adults. For the videos of aggressive dogs, partic-
ipants of all age groups gave significantly more “angry” and “scared” responses (Table 1),
which were matched to the professionals’ “aggressive” and “fearful” responses, and were
therefore considered correct responses. Four-year-old children gave fewer angry and scared
responses (61% and 16%, respectively) compared with 6-year-olds (angry 82% and scared
10%), 8-year-olds (angry 85% and scared 10%), 10-year-olds (angry 79% and scared 16%),
and adults (angry 57% and scared 42%). Therefore, even though in all age groups most par-
ticipants gave the correct answer, younger children had a tendency to make more mistakes
than older children and adults. Four-year-old children were more likely to think that the dog
looked happy (15%) than participants in other age groups (1% to 4%). They were also more
likely to think that the dog looked sad (8%) than the other age groups (0% to 4%).
Accuracy of Judgments and Features Reported
Participants who correctly judged the dogs’ behavior as aggressive were most likely to report
attending to the sound the dogs were making (89% of responses), whereas those who did not
correctly identify the behavior as aggressive were most likely to report attending to the tail
(44% of responses) (2 = 367, df = 3, p < 0.001). Generally, children said that they based their
answer on listening to the sound the dog was making (Figure 2). Adults also mostly reported
attending to the sound the dog made, but less so than the children, and they reported at-
tending to other features more than the children, in particular the dog’s movement. Within the
children, 10-year-olds reported sound the least and movement the most, therefore if their an-
swers are significantly different from those of the adults, we can assume that the difference be-
tween the adults and younger children will be significant too. In fact, a chi-square analysis
shows that 10-year-old children were 2.75 times more likely to report sound than the adults,
and that the adults looked more at the dogs’ movements (31%) than did 10-year-old children
Anthrozoös
(18%) (2 = 48.5, df = 3, p < 0.001). Figure 2 shows that as age increases, the participants
looked more at the dog’s movement.
When participants incorrectly identified the fearful dogs, they were more likely to report at-
tending to the dog’s face than when they correctly identified the dogs as fearful (41% vs. 15%).
This corresponded to a significant association between being wrong and reporting the dog’s
face and being right and reporting other actions/features (2 = 80.2, df = 1, p < 0.001). This
72
Lakestani et al.
100 Features
Reported
Friendly Dogs
80 face
movement
60 sound
tail
40
20
0
Percentage of Responses
100
Fearful Dogs
80
Video Type
60
40
20
0
100
Aggressive Dogs
80
60
40
20
0
4-year-olds 6-year-olds 8-year-olds 10-year-olds adults
Figure 2. Features that the participants reported attending to.

Comparison of participants of different age groups for each video type.
4-year-olds n = 107, 6-year-olds n = 105, 8-year-olds n = 109,
10-year-olds n = 109, adults n = 120.
pattern of attending to the dog’s face was clearest in 4-year-olds. In fact, most of the re-
sponses of 4-year-olds looking at videos of fearful dogs reported the dog’s face (54%, Figure
2), while most of the 6-year-olds’ responses reported looking at the movements the dogs
were making (53%). These differences in responses corresponded to a significant association
between age and type of feature looked at for these two age groups (2 = 8.7, df = 3, p < 0.05).
Older children (8- and 10-year-olds) and adults all reported looking at the dogs’ movements
more than other features. Ten-year-olds, compared with 6-year-olds, looked more at the dog’s
movement (60% and 53%, respectively) and at its tail (8% vs. 4%), but less at its face (29%
vs. 40%) (2 = 9.7, df = 3, p < 0.05). The adults looked less at the dog’s movements (52%)
but more at its tail (20%) than 10-year-olds (2 = 23.7, df = 3, p < 0.05). In summary, 4-year-
old children seem to mainly look at the dog’s face when assessing the state of a fearful dog,
but from the age of 6, children look less at the face and more at the dog’s movements, and
this tendency increased with 8- and 10-year-old children.
Similarly, for the videos of the friendly dogs, 4-year-old children reported attending to the
Anthrozoös
face more and less at movements, compared with 6-year-old children (2= 4.4, df = 1,
p < 0.05; see Figure 2). Also 6-year-olds looked more at the dog’s face and less at its move-
ment than 8-year-olds (2 = 4.4, df = 1, p < 0.05). No significant associations were found be-
tween age and the features reported for 8- and 10-year-olds or 6- and 10-year-olds. However,
an association was found for 4- and 10-year-old children: 4-year-olds looked at the dog’s face
73
more and less at its movement than 10-year-olds (2 = 11.9, df = 1, p < 0.001). There also was
a significant association between age and the behaviors reported for 10-year-old children and
adults (2 = 21.1, df = 3, p < 0.001). The most frequent answer for the adults corresponded to
looking at the dog’s tail (44%), while 10-year-olds most frequently reported looking at the dog’s
movement (37%). Twenty-nine percent of 10-year-olds’ responses corresponded to looking at
the dog’s face, while for the adults looking at the face corresponded to only 21% of responses.
In summary, 4- and 6-year-olds mostly reported looking at the dog’s face, whereas 8- and
10-year-olds mostly reported its movement and adults mostly reported looking at its tail.
In addition to attending to different dog features compared with older participants, 4-year-old
children also reported attending to significantly fewer dog features (mean = 4.61) than 6-year-old
children (mean = 8.26) (Mann-Whitney U = 1385.5, p < 0.01). In fact, overall the number of
features reported increased with age. Ten-year-old children reported significantly more features
(mean = 11.14) than 8-year-old children (mean = 9.32) (U = 3924, p < 0.001). And adults
reported significantly more features (mean = 12.58) than 10-year-old children
(U = 5079, p < 0.01).

Pet Ownership
There was a significant association between pet ownership (defined as not owning a pet vs.
having owned a pet in the past and/or at present) and accuracy of interpretation of dog be-
havior (2 = 19.3, df = 2, p < 0.01). Dog owners gave the highest number of correct answers
(79%), followed by participants owning other pets (76%), and finally participants who owned
no pets (72%). Separate chi-square tests were then performed on each age group. No
significant association was found between pet ownership and the type of answer given for the
children in any age group. However, a significant association was found for the adults. Adult
dog owners gave more correct answers (95%) than adults who owned other pets (89%) and
those who did not own any pet (92%) (2 = 7.9, df = 2, p < 0.05).
Dog-Bite Accident Experience
No significant association was found between the accuracy of emotion judgments (right/wrong)
and whether the participants had been bitten or not. Participants who had been bitten in the
past did not give more incorrect answers than those who had never been bitten. On the con-
trary, they seemed to give more correct answers (80%) than participants who had never been
bitten (74%), but the difference was not significant.
Numbers and Characteristics of Dog-Bite Victims
Eleven percent of the participants (62 victims) reported having been bitten by a dog in the
past. Out of these 62 victims, 22 were university undergraduates, most of whom had been
bitten between the ages of 6 and 11 years of age (64%), 14% had been bitten between the
ages of 0–5 years, another 14% between 11 and 16 years old, and 9% when they were more
than 17 years old. Data were also collected for participants of the other age groups by ask-
ing parents if their children had been bitten in the past. Although the data are not as mean-
ingful as that of the adults, because children were below the age of 11 and therefore it did
Anthrozoös
not include any dog bite likelihood that may happen later on in life, it does provide interest-
ing information about the trends of these accidents. The number of victims in the different age
groups was: three 4-year-olds, 12 6-year-olds, nine 8-year-olds, and 16 10-year-olds. Out of
the 12 6-year-olds who had been bitten, 11 had been bitten between the ages of 0 and
5 years, and one at the age of 6 years. Four out of the nine 8-year-olds who had been bitten
had had the accident between the ages of 0 and 5 years, and five after the age of 6 years.
74
Lakestani et al.
Finally, exactly half of 10-year-olds had been bitten between the age of 0 and 5 years, and
the other half after the age of 6.
The majority of victims had been bitten by a familiar dog (51 victims), and most of these re-
ported that the accident was caused by a dog that was not their own (35), while 16 reported that
they had been bitten by their own dog. Only 11 participants reported having been bitten by an
unfamiliar dog. Exactly the same number of males and females had been victims of dog bites.
Discussion
Most participants in this study were reasonably good at interpreting dog behavior, but younger
children had more difficulty than older children and adults. These findings show that even 4-
year-olds have some ability to make accurate judgments about dogs’ aggressive and friendly
emotional states, and that from the age of 8 years, children also have some ability to make ac-
curate judgments about dogs’ fearful emotional states, although this ability becomes more
robust with age. Our results are in close concordance with those of Pongrácz et al. (2011), who
compared the ability of children aged 6, 8, and 10 years and adults to discriminate dog barks
by assigning them to three inner states: fear, anger, and happiness. They also found that all
participants were good at recognizing aggression but had more difficulties with happiness and
fear, and that this applied particularly to 6- and 8-year-old children.
Four-year-old children were especially poor at identifying fear in dogs, whereas, like the
older participants, they were better at identifying aggressive dogs. They tended to say that
the dogs looked happy, whereas in fact they were displaying fear. This may be explained by
examining the features that participants reported attending to when making their judgments.
These appear to be related to the accuracy of these judgments, because participants who in-
correctly interpreted the dogs’ behavior seemed to be attending to features that are uninfor-
mative or potentially misleading. For example, the 4-year-olds differed from the older age
groups not only in their greater tendency to make incorrect judgments about fearful dogs, but
also in their greater tendency to report attending to the fearful dog’s face (rather than to its
movement). Conversely, when participants correctly judged the dogs’ behavior as aggressive,
they were most likely to report attending to the sound the dogs were making, whereas when
they did not correctly identify the behavior as aggressive, but mistook it for friendly behavior,
they were most likely to report attending to the tail. This is expected since barking and growl-
ing (sound) are clear signs of aggressive behavior, while tail wagging is important in identifying
a friendly dog but not so much in identifying an aggressive one. Even though tail wagging
often occurs when dogs display aggressive behavior, it is a stiffer movement compared with
that of friendly tail wagging, and in the case of aggressive behavior other cues such as sound
(barking and growling) are more reliable for interpreting the dog’s behavior.
Recognizing fear in dogs may be complex for younger children because the expression of
fear is different from humans. Dogs display fear mainly by trying to get away or standing still if
they cannot get away, tucking the tail between their legs, and pushing their ears down against
their head (Serpell 1995; Case 2005). Humans may also use flight, moving backwards and
Anthrozoös
bowing (De Meijer 1989), but as with the other emotions, facial expression also provides im-
portant cues, such as raised brows, widened eyes, and lips drawn down and back (Marsh,
Adams and Kleck 2005). Therefore, if the participants were trying to interpret the dog’s state
by looking at its face, they were more likely to give an incorrect answer, and in fact many of
both the children and adults who gave the wrong answer reported attending to the dog’s face
75
more than to other features.

The dogs used in the videos were displaying aggression as a result of fear, and many adults
said that the dogs were scared while most of the children simply reported that the dogs were
angry. These results suggest that children as young as 4 years of age are capable of recog-
nizing aggressive behavior in dogs but not the underlying fearful behavior. Research on prosody
suggests that anger may be the first emotion to be recognized by children when assessing
human emotions (Hortacsu and Ekinci 1992). Therefore, it may be that children were better at
recognizing angry dogs because they were making a noise whereas the fearful and friendly
dogs were silent. In addition, the aggressive dogs were displaying mixed emotions, and even
though children as young as 5 years old can identify mixed emotions in very specific condi-
tions (Kestenbaum and Gelman 1995), children up to the age of 10 generally deny that mixed
emotions can occur (Harris 1983; Meerum-Terwogt et al. 1986). This is thought to be caused
by the fact that younger children tend to focus on single rather than multiple features to inter-
pret emotions (Diamond and Carey 1977; Kestenbaum 1992). The present study supports
these results, in that younger children reported fewer dog features than older children and
adults. The adults recognized that the dogs were displaying fear because they could accept
that the animal may display mixed emotions and that although it was barking and being
aggressive, this was due to a fearful state.
Another reason why children are better at identifying aggressive dogs may be that the most
salient features (i.e., sound) were also the features that were associated with the correct
answer. The friendly and fearful dogs were not displaying behaviors that were as salient and
attention catching as barking and growling. This may be the reason why, for these videos,
4-year-old children reported attending to the face more than to the other features, since the
face is the feature that they are thought to attend to first when assessing emotions in humans
(Kestenbaum and Gelman 1995). Thus, sounds seem to be very important in recognizing
aggressive behavior in dogs, and this may explain why our results are different to those of
Tami and Gallagher (2009), who reported that fear was one of the behaviors that their partic-
ipants recognized the best and that aggression was the one that they had the most difficulty
with. Since in their study the videos did not include any sounds, and since the results of the
present study show that sound was a strong component in the participants’ identification of
aggressive dogs, this difference may explain why Tami and Gallagher found that participants
did poorly with the videos of aggressive dogs.
One would expect the ability to interpret dog behavior to improve with experience and
exposure to dogs. Children who owned dogs, however, were not better than those who did
not own dogs. The difference in the ability to interpret dog behavior between dog owners
and non-dog owners was found only in adults. As expected, adult dog owners were better
at interpreting dog behavior than non-dog owners. It is possible that the children were too
young and that even those who owned dogs had not had enough exposure to dogs to give
them the opportunity to acquire a better knowledge of dog behavior compared with
non-dog owners.
The findings of the present study have important implications for dog-bite prevention.
Anthrozoös
First, the need for prevention is underlined by the findings regarding the incidence of dog
bites obtained from the questionnaire administered as part of this study. Eleven percent of the
participants reported having been bitten by a dog in the past. While this is much higher than
the number of victims reported in hospitals—approximately 0.1% of the population are vic-
tims of dog-bite accidents (Ostanello et al. 2005; Schalamon et al. 2006; Lakestani 2008)—
76
the discrepancy is consistent with evidence that many victims do not seek medical attention
Lakestani et al.
(Thompson 1997). Second, the current findings have implications regarding how prevention
measures should be targeted. Our results indicate that children are particularly at risk of being
bitten by dogs and that the risk decreases as age increases, which is consistent with previ-
ous findings (Guy et al. 2001; Mendez Gallart et al. 2002). The current findings, considered
in conjunction with previous findings, imply that prevention programs should particularly tar-
get young children, including those who already have experience with familiar dogs, and
should target girls as well as boys. The fact that younger children are less good at interpret-
ing dog behavior, combined with the proposal that a number of dog-bite accidents happen
because people misinterpret the behavior of dogs, suggests that children would benefit from
being educated on how to interpret the behavior of dogs. By providing education to 4-year-
old children, accidents may be prevented before children reach the age at which they are
most at risk of being bitten. Moreover, if 4-year-old children are able to learn how to interpret
the behavior of dogs, older children should be even more successful.
Teaching children how to interpret dog behavior is not enough for preventing dog bites. It
is useful to teach children how to recognize a fearful dog but they also need to be taught that
a fearful dog should not be approached. Moreover, there are also instances in which dogs
bite without showing obvious signs of fear, for example, when a child runs past a dog and the
dog suddenly gets frightened, or wants to defend its territory, and bites. In such a case, the
dog does not have the time to display fear, or even if it does, the child would not have time to
see it because he or she is running past the dog. Therefore, it is also important to teach chil-
dren about the different potentially dangerous situations that they need to avoid, such as not
running in front of dogs, or not disturbing a dog while it is sleeping or eating. However, an im-
portant issue to consider in teaching children how to avoid circumstances in which dogs may
bite is whether young children are capable of understanding that these are dangerous situa-
tions. Studies investigating young children’s awareness of dangerous situations in the home
and in road environments suggest that young children are poor at identifying dangerous
situations (Grieve and Willams 1985; Ampofo-Boateng and Thomson 1991; Hill, Lewis and
Dunbar 2000). These studies, however, do show that young children have some awareness
of danger and that there is the potential for their understanding to be enhanced by training
about what makes specific situations dangerous. They suggest that safety education needs
to be aimed at making danger salient to children, as well as teaching them the nature of the
danger and strategies for dealing with it. With regards to the prevention of dog bites, teach-
ing children how to interpret the behavior of dogs provides them with information on the nature
of the danger. Teaching them about dangerous situations, and the consequences of their ac-
tions (e.g., do not disturb the dog while he is eating because he may bite you), focuses on the
danger of the situation. Based on this we would expect an effective dog-bite prevention
program to include a component teaching children how to interpret dog behavior and also a
component teaching them how to avoid dangerous situations. In addition, the program should
be composed of videos of real dogs because, according to Hill and colleagues (2000), video
is a more effective medium than static pictures.
Anthrozoös
Unfortunately, with this study we were unable to evaluate the effect of different dog features
on the participants’ judgment of their state. It would be interesting to investigate the effect of
different dog features on the participants’ judgments by presenting them with a set of stimuli
in which features such as tail length and shape, coat length and color, and ear size and shape
are varied systematically. It will also be important for future research to investigate whether
77
children’s ability to identify dogs’ emotional states is affected by the breed of dog.
In conclusion, the present study shows that the ability to correctly interpret dog behavior
increases as children get older, and that fear is the most difficult behavior for them to interpret.
It is suggested that the reason for younger children being less good at interpreting dog behavior
is that they focus on single rather than multiple features of the dogs. In addition, children seem
to attend to the most salient features of dogs, such as the face when no sound is present, but
these features may not be the ones that would give them the correct cue for interpreting the
dog’s emotional state. Attending to several features is important when interpreting dog behavior
because in most cases several cues are needed for correct interpretation (e.g., ears and
general posture), rather than single ones (e.g., face only).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank a number of people who permitted us to carry this study out. All the
school children who participated and all the school staff who supported this study. All the peo-
ple who helped with finding and contacting schools and testing University students, in partic-
ular: Prof Marina Verga and Prof Prato-Previde from the Università degli studi di Milano. Prof
Xavier Manteca and Prof Olga Soler Vilageliu from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
and Ms Xesca Grau and Dr Nuria Calzada from Public Health Agency of Barcelona.
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Appendix 1. Description of the video material.

Video Description
Friendly Black Length: 7 seconds. A black Labrador on a lead is standing and wagging his tail in a
Labrador 1 friendly relaxed manner. The dog is looking down at first then up. There is no sound
other than the sound of the tail touching the lead the dog is attached to.
Friendly Black Length: 5 seconds. A black Labrador on a lead displays a play bow followed by a
Labrador 2 small leap forward. One can hear the sound of the tail wagging against the lead, the
sound of the dog leaping, and a mild exhalation/panting sound as he leaps forward.
Friendly Weimaraner Length: 6 seconds. The dog on the lead is seen approaching a person, and sniffing
their hand and then their torso. The dog is constantly wagging his tail and standing still
while sniffing the person. Only the legs, a hand, and a part of torso of the person are
visible and it is not possible to tell whether the person is a man or a woman.
Aggressive German Length: 10 seconds. The dog is held on a lead by a person whose feet only are visible.
Shepherd The dog is barking vigorously but it is not possible to see what the dog is barking at.
He wags his tail in a vigorous circular manner throughout the video and he attempts a
small leap at the start of the video but is prevented from moving forward by the lead.
Aggressive Husky Length: 10 seconds. The husky is held on a lead and is barking while wagging his tail
and standing still in a stiff posture. Around the 6th second the dog moves slightly side-
ways and almost attempts a leap forward (i.e., she displays a slightly visible small jump).
Aggressive Grey Length: 9 seconds. For the first two seconds the small dog, held on a lead, is staring
Bedlington/Schnauzer at something (not visible in the video) while standing still in a stiff manner and wagging
Cross-Type Dog his tail. He then starts barking, still wagging his tail and slightly leaping backwards. At
the 5th second the dog starts growling and walks back (away from what he was
barking at) to stand right next to the person who is holding him on the lead (only the
feet and leg of the person are visible).
Fearful Brown and Length: 10 seconds. The dog is on a lead and is facing backwards for the first two
Grey Pomeranian seconds of the video. The tail is visibly facing down and one can tell the dog is panting
despite his face not being visible because of the movement of his thoracic cage. The
dog then slowly turns around and is visible from the side with his head facing the
camera but his gaze is looking sideways away from the lead. The dog is panting and
licks his nose. He then turns his head away to the other direction and toward the lead
whilst still panting and with his tail down. The dog’s panting is very low and cannot be
heard, only the sound of the lead.
Fearful Schnauzer Length:11 seconds. The dog is on a lead facing sideways toward a door. The dog’s
tail is cropped, his back legs are clearly shaking, and he is panting and looking at the
door. At the third second he briefly looks at the camera, and at the 11th second he
starts walking toward the closed door. The rest of the time he is standing still.
Fearful Ridgeback Length: 9 seconds. The dog is on a lead and the legs of the person holding the lead
are visible. The dog has his back to the camera and is facing toward a closed door.
The dog is standing still with his tail between his legs and it can be seen, from the back
of his head, that he is looking at the door. At the 2nd second he looks at the camera
until the 5th second when he briefly glances at something behind him and then he
quickly turns his head back to face the door, walks toward it, and sniffs it as if he
wants to go out.
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