Dr Berns' study shows the importance of social reward and praise to dogs.

Research shows the importance of social reward

Most dogs prefer praise from their owners over treats, according to new research.

The study is the first of its kind to combine behavioural experiments with brain imaging data to explore canine reward preferences.

"We are trying to understand the basis of the dog-human bond whether it's mainly about food, or about the relationship itself," says Dr Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University and lead author of the research.

Dr Berns' team trained 15 dogs to associate three different objects with different outcomes. A pink toy truck signalled a food reward; a blue toy knight signalled verbal praise from the owner, and a hairbrush signalled no reward.

They proceeded to test the dogs on the three objects while in an fMRI machine. Each dog underwent 32 trials on each object while their neural activity was recorded.

Four of the dogs showed a particularly strong activation for the toy that signalled praise. Nine of the dogs showed similar neural activation for both praise and food stimulus. Two of the dogs showed more activation when shown the stimulus for food.

The team then carried out a behavioural experiment. They placed each dog in a room that contained a simple Y-shaped maze. One path led to a bowl of food, while the other to the dog's owner. The owner sat with their back to their dogs.

The dog was then repeatedly released into the room and allowed to select one of the paths. If they opted for the owner, the owner praised them.

“We found that the caudate response of each dog in the first experiment correlated with their choices in the second experiment,” Berns says. “Dogs are individuals and their neurological profiles fit the behavioural choices they make.

"Most of the dogs alternated between food and owner, but the dogs with the strongest neural response to praise chose to go to their owners 80 to 90 percent of the time. It shows the importance of social reward and praise to dogs. It may be analogous to how we humans feel when someone praises us.”

The study, Awake canine fMRI predicts dog's preference for praise versus food, is published in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.