Family dogs, one of the most commonly kept pets, have been shown to manifest individual
– though not pop-
ulation level – lateralisation across various visuo-motor domains. While the potential
practical implications of
such side preferences have not yet been thoroughly explored, some research suggests
that, similar to humans,
certain individual dogs might display spatial biases that can be disadvantageous to
them. Study 1 set out to
explore the potential relationship between visuo-motor side preference measured in
a choice task and tactile
preference observed during petting by a human complemented with the assessment of
stress-related signals.
Individual differences were observed in both the two-way choice and petting tasks
with some of the subjects
showing clear side preferences. However, no correlation was found between side preferences
across the two tests,
suggesting that visual and tactile lateralisation are not linked. Dogs that tolerated
petting longer on one side also
tended to tolerate it longer on the other side, while the presence of stress signals
did not predict the duration of
tolerance. Study 2 asked human respondents to guess based on short video clips from
Study 1 if the dog being
petted would leave the situation within the next few seconds or would stay in the
situation. Participants were
able to make their guesses with an above chance success, and whether or not they were
correct was not related to
self-perceived certainty suggesting implicit processing underlying their assessments.
Participants’ success rates
only minimally differed as a function of their experience with dogs or therapy work
specifically. Our findings
indicate that visual and tactile lateralisation are not associated, suggesting that
different mechanisms may un-
derlie these forms of lateralised behaviour. The present results do not support a
clear applied relevance of tactile
side preference in predicting withdrawal behaviour in structured human-dog interaction
contexts.
