Can dogs help babies learn?

Researchers want to test how living with canines can affect development

VANCOUVER— Kathy Powelson says her daughter showed signs she was learning empathy from her furry siblings as early as when she was 3 years old. She would give extra hugs to the one that needed them the most — Peanut, an elderly and sick Chihuahua the family rescued from a shelter.

But a group of researchers at the University of British Columbia believe the benefits of having fido in your family could show up before that, in the first few months of life.

The Infant Study Centre, led by Janet Werker, wants to find out whether dogs can help babies learn language, both verbal and physical. It is putting a call out for families in the Vancouver area with babies between 2 and 6 months of age who want to participate in the study.

This would be the first study looking at how living with dogs affects babies, said Nicole Sugden, a post-doctoral fellow at the centre.

“What we’re specifically looking at is whether dogs can change infants’ brain responses to language or boost their ability to understand an adult,” she said.

Dozens of studies already link the presence of dogs to children’s health, including research that shows dogs boost children’s immunity systems and lower the risk for asthma. Other studies show dogs can improve children’s emotional and social well being.

There is a good chance dogs can shape babies’ learning, said Sugden, who pointed out humans have lived with dogs for more than 10,000 years.

“With that co-evolution, we may show early social and communicative learning from seeing adults interact with dogs — and as infants, interacting with dogs ourselves.”

Dogs are one of only a handful of animals that can understand the pointing gesture at a young age, according to longtime dog behaviouralist, Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at UBC.

Dogs as young as five weeks old look at the direction a human is pointing toward, whereas wolves will simply look at the human’s hand, he said. Even chimpanzees take a much longer amount of time to learn the meaning of the gesture, he added.

Sugden and other researchers will run through a variety of scenarios during the experiment, which essentially requires them to play with infants. During playtime, the researchers will point and gaze at a particular toy. They will then record how babies respond to that action and analyze whether babies who live with dogs respond differently.

Pointing and gaze cues are common signals people use when communicating with both dogs and babies, said Sugden. Adults also often employ the same style of high-pitched speech – “baby talk” – when interacting with dogs and infants, she said.

There is no question children benefit from having animals in their lives, said Powelson, executive director of the animal welfare organization, Paws For Hope Animal Foundation. She regularly adopts animals, some elderly, some with physical disabilities, and she believes her now 6-year-old daughter has learned compassion for animals by growing up with them.

Participating babies will receive an honorary UBC degree certificate. Researchers are looking for 50 families with dogs, and 50 families without dogs.