Mind the dog: real dogs elicit emotional and mental state language in parent-child conversations

Growing up with a pet, especially a dog, can play a significant and emotionally meaningful role in a child's life. Living with a pet is related to a range of positive social-emotional outcomes, such as increased empathy and prosocial behavior, but the mechanisms underlying these relations are not well understood. One potential pathway by which pets might encourage the development of empathy is through the use of emotional and mental state (EMST) language during conversations about pets. In this experiment, 184 children (108 females; 36-72 months) and their primary caregivers (176 mothers, 6 fathers, 2 others) who currently lived with a dog (n = 91) or have never lived with a dog or cat (n = 93) were randomly assigned to read a wordless picture book depicting either a real dog or a lifelike toy dog. Conversations were transcribed and coded for EMST language. Our results show that both parents and children produced higher proportions of EMST language when viewing and discussing a real dog versus a toy dog, regardless of pet ownership. These findings provide some of the first experimental evidence that a single brief exposure to a representation of a real dog encourages greater use of EMST language in parent-child interactions-language that is associated with children's positive social-emotional development.