The implicit reward value of the owner's face for dogs

It is increasingly assumed that domestication has equipped dogs with unique socio-cognitive skills, which raises the possibility of intriguing parallels between the social motivational systems of the two species. However, the positive incentive value of human facial stimuli is a largely unexplored area. Here, we investigated whether the owner's face serves as a social reinforcer. In a two-way choice task N = 39 dogs were presented with a short video about their owners' head showing the face (facing owner [FO]) vs. the back of the head (non-facing owner). Despite both locations containing equal food reward, dogs approached the container associated with FO more frequently (p < .001), and this was not affected by side, trial order, and choice latency. However, the considerable inter-individual differences in dogs' task performance suggest that the added social component required special social skills which need to be further explored.