Point and stare to direct your dog's attention

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-02-12 11:01

International

A dog wearing the eye-tracking headgear. Credit: Völter et al. / Royal Society

Austrian and German scientists say the best way to get your mutt to pay attention to something (a chewed-up pair of slippers or a 'present' left on the rug perhaps?) is to point and stare at it at the same time. The scientists tracked the gaze of 20 pet dogs wearing eye-tracking goggles while their owners tried to get them to pay attention to a hidden food reward using five different methods: pointing; pointing + gazing; gazing; fake throwing; and no action. The team found gestures shifted dogs’ gaze toward the owner’s hand, but when combined with a directed gaze, their attention shifted towards the treat. The results show that the combination of pointing and staring was the most effective way to alert dogs to the hidden treat, the authors conclude.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Using mobile eye tracking to study dogs' understanding of human referential communication

In this study, we used mobile eye tracking to examine how dogs allocate their attention during interactions with humans. Dogs wore an eye-tracking headgear that recorded their eye movements while they engaged in a choice task in which a human informant indicated the location of a hidden food reward using different cues. The results show that the combination of pointing and gaze cues was especially effective, directing dogs’ attention straight from the signaller to the cued object and significantly influencing their subsequent choices.

- The best way to direct your dog’s attention is to point and stare. Eye-tracking goggles fitted to 20 pet dogs tracked their gaze as their owners pointed, looked, or faked throwing towards a hidden treat. Gestures shifted dogs’ gaze towards the owner’s hand, but when combined with a directed gaze, their attention shifted towards the treat.

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Research The Royal Society, Web page The URL will go live at some point after the embargo ends

Journal/
conference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany

Funder: This research was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P36896-B (CV). For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.

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