Seeing with ears: Sightless humans' perception of dog bark provides a test for structural rules in vocal communication

Abstract

Prerecorded family dog (Canis familiaris) barks were played back to groups of congenitally sightless, sightless with prior visual experience, and sighted people (none of whom had ever owned a dog). We found that blind people without any previous canine visual experiences can categorize accurately various dog barks recorded in different contexts, and their results are very close to those of sighted people in characterizing the emotional content of barks. These findings suggest that humans can recognize some of the most important motivational states reflecting, for example, fear or aggression in a dog's bark without any visual experience. It is very likely that this result can be generalized to other mammalian species—that is, no visual experience of another individual is needed for recognizing some of the most important motivational states of the caller.

Keywords:

• Dog
• Barking
• Communication
• Blind people
• Domestication

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Karen McComb and Robert Seyfarth for their suggestions, Antal Dóka for his technical support, and Katalin Molnár, secretary general, Hungarian Association for the Blind and Celeste Pongrácz for correcting the English of this manuscript. This study was funded by grants from the Hungarian Ministry of Education (Felsőoktatási Kutatási és Fejlesztési Pályázat – FKFP) 127/2001; (Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alap – OTKA) T029705; Hungarian (National Science Foundation – NSF) T047235; and the European Union, FP7-ICT-2007 LIREC 215554.