Hearing Dogs and Seeing Barks: Multimodal Sensory Perception of Dogs

Abstract

The field of multisensory integration in human speech perception has been well explored throughout a multitude of studies. Perceptual phenomena and models have been reported, including most notably, the McGurk effect and the Morton-Massaro law of information integration. Existing research of multimodal integration in human perception, include studies that involve perception of drinks and food. Beyond this, scientists have also studied how non-human species, such as dolphins and bats, integrate different sources of information. The purpose of the current study was to test whether multimodal sensory integration is used by humans when perceiving the size of dogs. Three separate audio-visual sources of barking dogs – sized small, medium, and large – were used. A 3x3 expanded factorial design was applied to test all possible pairings of auditory and visual combinations from the three sources. The stimuli were included on a questionnaire and then digitally distributed to participants, the majority of whom were high-school students aged 13-17. After viewing each stimulus, participants were prompted to answer what sized dog barked. The results of the current study were consistent with the McGurk effect. When the auditory-visual stimuli were consistent, participants were able to accurately identify what kind of dog barked. However, when the auditory-visual stimuli were inconsistent, the intermediate responses were most frequent. Thus, the results of this study are not consistent with the motor theory of perception. This study yields practical applications in the field of interspecies perception and human-canine communication.