How children and parents interpret dogs' body language

With bite figures from interview data as high as 47 % (Beck & Jones, 1985; Spiegel, 2000), and National Health Service statistics in the UK showing a 40 % increase in dog bite figures in 2008 and even higher increases, at times of over 100 % in more recent years (NHS, 2008; 2012), we are addressing a serious and wide-spread – but largely avoidable – problem. When trying to enable safe interaction between children and dogs, it is vital that children are able to interpret the animal’s signalling correctly to avoid injury and distress. However, it has been shown that children and adults often do not understand dogs’ body signalling (Reisner & Shofer 2008). Without tuition, children look mainly at the dog’s face. In addition, children often confuse a fearful or angry dog with a friendly one (Meints, Racca & Hickey, 2010). This study investigated cross-sectionally and longitudinally how 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children interpret dogs’ stress signaling (N = 43, 34 and 36 respectively). We tested at Time 1 (before and after training intervention), Time 2 (after 6 months) and Time 3 (after 1 year) by showing dog videos according to the escalation steps of appeasement signalling (Shepherd, 2002). Videos had been assessed independently by four experienced dog behaviour experts and were then grouped into four categories (high, medium, low distress and “happy”). We investigated children’s evaluations of dogs by using a 5-point scale with faces ranging from happy (1) via neutral to unhappy (5). We recorded their looking behaviour using a Tobii Eye-tracker. Parents (N = 33) also took part in separate sessions and underwent the same procedure. We collected questionnaire data, e.g. on dog ownership, SES, demographics, bite incidents. First results on correct answers (pre and post) show a main effect of Age – knowledge improves significantly with age (F(3,122) = 15.05; p < .0001). We also observed a highly significant main effect of Learning (F(3,122) = 56.61; p < .0001) with risk judgements improving from pre-training at time 1 to test at time 1 and 2. Most significant improvements in learning take place in 5 yearolds and adults (F(3,122) = 6.80; p < .0003). We also found a main effect of Distress Judgement (F(3,366) = 243.90; p < .0001) – participants show some, but not full awareness of risk and least distress recognition was shown by 3-year-olds. There were no main effects for Gender or Dog Ownership. The error analysis shows that errors are made in all distress categories (high, medium, low). The lower the distress category, the more errors we find. The younger the participants, the more errors occur and the more serious the errors are – again, we find significant misinterpretation errors of highly distressed dogs as “happy” – these errors occur before training to 50–65 % in 3–5-yearolds and 17 % in adults and are reduced after training to 17–28 % in 4–5-year-old children with reduction to no errors in adults. We conclude that successful teaching of dog signalling is possible. Especially children from 4 years onwards profit from the intervention and show significant improvements in knowledge straight after the intervention and also over time. Increased awareness and knowledge can lead to safer behaviour with dogs, risk reduction and potentially less bite incidents while dogs profit as they are treated more appropriately.