Mary Allen
Treats are great, no question. But they are not the ultimate reward for our dogs – they often appreciate words of praise even more.
When treats fly through the air, dog usually jumps happily after them. And every trick or command works that much better when there is a chance of food. Can there be a nicer reward? Yes, it can: words of praise are in no way inferior to the delicious appetizers, researchers from Emory University in Druid Hills have now found out based on a study.
What is the Relationship Between Dogs & Humans?
“One theory about dogs is that they are essentially Pavlovian machines: they want food – and their owners are just the means to get it,” Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns told the online knowledge magazine Scinexx. “Another, more common interpretation of their behavior is that dogs value human contact itself.” Berns and his colleagues wanted to find out which of the two theories was correct.
For their study, the researchers tested how the animals’ brains reacted to different reward stimuli. For the experiment, the 15 dogs first learned to associate three objects with specific results: a pink toy car meant food, a blue knight meant verbal praise from the master or mistress, and there was no reward for a hairbrush. The scientists tested which of the items activated the dogs’ reward centers the most.
Kind Words Preferred
The results were surprising: “Most dogs favored their owner’s praise over food or responded similarly to both rewards. Only two of the dogs were true gluttons and showed a strong preference for the food,” said Berns. Four of the dogs preferred the praise, and nine of them valued the praise as well as the food.
This was also confirmed by a behavioral test. To do this, the dogs had to choose one of two paths in a simple maze – one path led to a bowl full of treats, the other to the master or mistress, who praised their dog with words of praise upon arrival. Most four-legged friends alternated evenly between food and humans. However, those who showed a strong preference for verbal praise in the brain test ran to their caregiver 80 to 90 percent of the time. “This reveals how important praise is for dogs – social rewards may have a similar meaning for them as they do for us humans,” comments Berns. (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2016)