ArticleScientific reports2020
The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat-human communication.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Construing Complex Referentiality in Interspecies Interaction: Embodiment and Biosemiotics.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- If you blink at me, I'll blink back. Domestic dogs' feedback to conspecific visual cues.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Article
- Rapid formation of picture-word association in cats.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Relationship between asymmetric nostril use and human emotional odours in cats.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Multimodal Communication in the Human-Cat Relationship: A Pilot Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Discrimination of cat-directed speech from human-directed speech in a population of indoor companion cats (Felis catus).Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Sociality of Cats toward Humans Can Be Influenced by Hormonal and Socio-Environmental Factors: Pilot Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- 2022 AAFP/ISFM Cat Friendly Veterinary Interaction Guidelines: Approach and Handling Techniques.Journal of feline medicine and surgery · 2022Article
- Cognition and the human-animal relationship: a review of the sociocognitive skills of domestic mammals toward humans.Animal cognition · 2022Review
- Mutual synchronization of eyeblinks between dogs/cats and humans.Current zoology · 2022Article
- Evaluating the accuracy of facial expressions as emotion indicators across contexts in dogs.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Conspecific and Human Sociality in the Domestic Cat: Consideration of Proximate Mechanisms, Human Selection and Implications for Cat Welfare.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- CalliFACS: The common marmoset Facial Action Coding System.PloS one · 2022Article
- Neuroimaging of human and non-human animal emotion and affect in the context of social relationships.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Review
- Feline communication strategies when presented with an unsolvable task: the attentional state of the person matters.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- 2021 AAHA/AAFP Feline Life Stage Guidelines.Journal of feline medicine and surgery · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Domestic animals are sensitive to human cues that facilitate inter-specific communication, including cues to emotional state. The eyes are important in signalling emotions, with the act of narrowing the eyes appearing to be associated with positive emotional communication in a range of species. This study examines the communicatory significance of a widely reported cat behaviour that involves eye narrowing, referred to as the slow blink sequence. Slow blink sequences typically involve a series of half-blinks followed by either a prolonged eye narrow or an eye closure. Our first experiment revealed that cat half-blinks and eye narrowing occurred more frequently in response to owners' slow blink stimuli towards their cats (compared to no owner-cat interaction). In a second experiment, this time where an experimenter provided the slow blink stimulus, cats had a higher propensity to approach the experimenter after a slow blink interaction than when they had adopted a neutral expression. Collectively, our results suggest that slow blink sequences may function as a form of positive emotional communication between cats and humans.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.