Learning emotion recognition from canines? Two for the road

The ability to recognize emotions is a prerequisite for interpersonal interaction and essential for emotional competencies. The present study aimed at exploring the possibility of enhancing the emotion recognition capability of human beings by using an animal-assisted intervention focusing on emotional expressions of dogs. A pre–post design was applied to 32 children aged 5-7 years and 34 adults aged 19-45 years, who received the multiprofessional animal-assisted intervention in groups of 6-12 participants. To measure emotion recognition, a computerized test, Vienna Emotion Recognition Tasks, was used to identify the emotion recognition capacity of the participants before and after 12 weeks of training. The hypotheses were tested using a general linear model with repeated measures, and effect sizes were calculated to gain further insight. The effect size eta square was used to analyze the variables on practical relevance. Results showed that the highest changes with relevant effect sizes in the adult group concerned the correct identification of anger and fear as well as the overall number of correctly identified facial expressions, including a decrease in latency to respond. The children also significantly increased their capacity for the recognition of anger and fear as well as disgust and neutral facial expressions. Additionally, they identified 5 more emotions correctly after the training and also decreased their latency to respond. The participants identified more emotions correctly and decreased their latency to respond significantly, even though “only” facial and/or emotional expressions of dogs were part of the program. A generalization process from human–dog interaction to human–human interaction seems to occur.