title: Humans rely on the same rules to assess emotional valence and intensity in conspecific and dog vocalizations.
abstract: Humans excel at assessing conspecific emotional valence and intensity, based solely on non-verbal vocal bursts that are also common in other mammals. It is not known, however, whether human listeners rely on similar acoustic cues to assess emotional content in conspecific and heterospecific vocalizations, and which acoustical parameters affect their performance. Here, for the first time, we directly compared the emotional valence and intensity perception of dog and human non-verbal vocalizations. We revealed similar relationships between acoustic features and emotional valence and intensity ratings of human and dog vocalizations: those with shorter call lengths were rated as more positive, whereas those with a higher pitch were rated as more intense. Our findings demonstrate that humans rate conspecific emotional vocalizations along basic acoustic rules, and that they apply similar rules when processing dog vocal expressions. This suggests that humans may utilize similar mental mechanisms for recognizing human and heterospecific vocal emotions.
authors.affiliation: MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, , Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, Budapest 1117, Hungary.
authors.forename: Tamás
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Faragó
authors.forename: Attila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Andics
authors.forename: Viktor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Devecseri
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kis
authors.forename: Márta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gácsi
authors.forename: Adám
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Miklósi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D004285:Dogs; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: dog; emotion intensity assessment; emotion valence assessment; human; non-verbal emotion expressions; vocal communication