Pet Dogs’ and Their Owners’ Reactions Toward Four Differently Shaped Speaking Agents: A Report on Qualitative Results in a Pilot Test

Social agents, whose primary role is to communicate with people, are becoming increasingly prevalent. Given this, dogs, being one of the most popular companions, may become jealous owing to the resulting triad relationship or their fear of agents. To aid future investigations for the design of a communication agent that can build a good relationship with both dog owners and dogs at home, we herein conducted two pilot tests to explore the types of words dog owners use in front of their dogs to determine whether a positive owner attitude toward the agents would affect how the dogs behaved with these communication agents. Furthermore, we determined whether the owners’ words and dogs’ behavior were affected by the agents’ physical forms (primitive, smaller/bigger humanoid, and dog-shaped). Through an analysis of video recordings of the behaviors of 29 dog owners and 34 dogs, the following suggestions are put forth: i) Tests involving dogs that have to confront unfamiliar speaking agents in an unfamiliar environment should occur in the presence of the dog owners, as conducted in previous studies, to evaluate the dogs’ behavior in the presence of the agents. ii) Dog owners’ descriptions of the agents differ on the basis of the agents’ physical forms. For example, owners not only mentioned the agents’ physical attributes, but also used adjectives such as “cool.” Furthermore, the owners engaged in more intelligent conversations with more complex agents. iii) Dog-shaped agents can garner attention from dogs.