Sociability modifies dogs’ sensitivity to biological motion of different social relevance

Preferential attention to living creatures is believed to be an intrinsic capacity of the visual system of several species, with perception of biological motion often studied and, in humans, it correlates with social cognitive performance. Although domestic dogs are exceptionally attentive to human social cues, it is unknown whether their sociability is associated with sensitivity to conspecific and heterospecific biological motion cues of different social relevance. We recorded video clips of point-light displays depicting a human or dog walking in either frontal or lateral view. In a preferential looking paradigm, dogs spontaneously viewed 16 paired point-light displays showing combinations of normal/inverted (control condition), human/dog and frontal/lateral views. Overall, dogs looked significantly longer at frontal human point-light display versus the inverted control, probably due to its clearer social/biological relevance. Dogs’ sociability, assessed through owner-completed questionnaires, further revealed that low-sociability dogs preferred the lateral point-light display view, whereas high-sociability dogs preferred the frontal view. Clearly, dogs can recognize biological motion, but their preference is influenced by their sociability and the stimulus salience, implying biological motion perception may reflect aspects of dogs’ social cognition.     

Preliminary study of police experience of misconduct in their colleagues

A pilot study of 33 male and 2 female municipal police officers, most between 30 and 40 years old, found that those whose colleagues more often engage in misconduct experience more excitement and more stress in their work.     

What do dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>) see? A review of vision in dogs and implications for cognition research

Over the last 20 years, a large amount of research has been conducted in an attempt to uncover the cognitive abilities of the domestic dog. While substantial advancements have been made, progress has been impeded by the fact that little is known about how dogs visually perceive their external environment. It is imperative that future research determines more precisely canine visual processing capabilities, particularly considering the increasing number of studies assessing cognition via paradigms requiring vision. This review discusses current research on visual cognition and emphasizes the importance of understanding dog visual processing. We review several areas of vision research in domestic dogs, such as sensitivity to light, visual perspective, visual acuity, form perception, and color vision, with a focus on how these abilities may affect performance in cognition tasks. Additionally, we consider the immense diversity seen in dog morphology and explore ways in which these physical differences, particularly in facial morphology, may result in, or perhaps even be caused by, different visual processing capacities in dogs. Finally, we suggest future directions for research in dog vision and cognition.     

Positive affect and learning: exploring the “Eureka Effect” in dogs

Animals may experience positive affective states in response to their own achievements. We investigated emotional responses to problem-solving in dogs, separating these from reactions to rewards per se using a yoked control design. We also questioned whether the intensity of reaction would vary with reward type. We examined the response (behavior and heart rate) of dogs as they learned to gain access to different rewards: (1) food (2) human contact, and (3) dog contact. Twelve beagles were assigned to matched pairs, and each dog served as both an experimental and a control animal during different stages of the experiment. We trained all dogs to perform distinct operant tasks and exposed them to additional devices to which they were not trained. Later, dogs were tested in a new context. When acting as an experimental dog, access to the reward was granted immediately upon completion of trained operant tasks. When acting as a control, access to the reward was independent of the dog’s actions and was instead granted after a delay equal to their matched partner’s latency to complete their task. Thus, differences between the two situations could be attributed to experimental dogs having the opportunity to learn to control access to the reward. Experimental dogs showed signs of excitement (e.g., increased tail wagging and activity) in response to their achievements, whereas controls showed signs of frustration (e.g., chewing of the operant device) in response to the unpredictability of the situation. The intensity of emotional response in experimental dogs was influenced by the reward type, i.e., greatest response to food and least to another dog. Our results suggest that dogs react emotionally to problem-solving opportunities and that tail wagging may be a useful indicator of positive affective states in dogs.     

Neurobehavioral evidence for individual differences in canine cognitive control: an awake fMRI study

Based on behavioral evidence, the domestic dog has emerged as a promising comparative model of human self-control. However, while research on human inhibition has probed heterogeneity and neuropathology through an integration of neural and behavioral evidence, there are no parallel data exploring the brain mechanisms involved in canine inhibition. Here, using a combination of cognitive testing and awake neuroimaging in domestic dogs, we provide evidence precisely localizing frontal brain regions underpinning response inhibition in this species and demonstrate the dynamic relationship between these regions and behavioral measures of control. Thirteen dogs took part in an in-scanner go/no-go task and an out-of-scanner A-not-B test. A frontal brain region was identified showing elevated neural activity for all subjects during successful inhibition in the scanner, and dogs showing greater mean brain activation in this region produced fewer false alarms. Better performance in the go/no-go task was also correlated with fewer errors in the out-of-scanner A-not-B test, suggesting that dogs show consistent neurobehavioral individual differences in cognitive control, as is seen in humans. These findings help establish parity between human and canine mechanisms of self-control and pave the way for future comparative studies examining their function and dysfunction.     

Are temporal features crucial acoustic cues in dog vocal recognition?

To investigate the perceptual mechanisms underlying conspecific vocal recognition in canine species, eighteen dogs were presented with playbacks of normal and reversed versions of typical dog vocalizations. Auditory perception was analysed using the head-turn paradigm, a non-invasive technique extensively employed to study hemispheric specializations for processing conspecific vocalizations in primates. The results revealed that dogs usually turn their heads with the right ear leading (left hemisphere activation) in response to the forward version of their typical calls, and with either no bias and the left ear leading (right hemisphere activation) in response to the reversed call versions. Overall, our findings suggest that temporal features are determinant auditory cues for call sound recognition in dogs, and support earlier findings of the role of the left hemisphere in the analyses of intraspecific communication.     

Sleep duration and self-reported Type A behavior: a replication.

Scores on the Jenkins Activity Survey (Form T)(Glass, 1977) were compared for 58 and 70 university students who reported, respectively, a regular sleep pattern of less or more than 8 hr per night. Replicating a previous report (Hicks et al., 1979), subjects who slept fewer hours scored higher on Type A behavior questions than those who slept more hours. However, for subjects with a less stable sleeping pattern, Type A scores for the two groups (ns = 72, 23) did not differ.     

Do dogs resemble their owners?

Abstract— We examined whether the frequent casual reports of people resembling their pets are accurate by having observers attempt to match dogs with their owners. We further explored whether any ability of observers to make such matches is due to people selecting dogs who resemble them, in which case the resemblance should be greater for predictable purebreds than for nonpurebreds, or is due to convergence, in which case the resemblance should grow with duration of ownership. Forty-five dogs and their owners were photographed separately, and judges were shown one owner, that owner's dog, and one other dog, with the task of picking out the true match. The results were consistent with a selection account: Observers were able to match only purebred dogs with their owners, and there was no relation between the ability to pair a person with his or her pet and the time they had cohabited. The ability to match people and pets did not seem to rely on any simple trait matching (e.g., size or hairiness). The results suggest that when people pick a pet, they seek one that, at some level, resembles them, and when they get a purebred, they get what they want.     

Deceptive-like behaviour in dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>)

Deception, the use of false signals to modify the behaviour of the receiver, occurs in low frequencies even in stable signalling systems. For example, it can be advantageous for subordinate individuals to deceive in competitive situations. We investigated in a three-way choice task whether dogs are able to mislead a human competitor, i.e. if they are capable of tactical deception. During training, dogs experienced the role of their owner, as always being cooperative, and two unfamiliar humans, one acting ‘cooperatively’ by giving food and the other being ‘competitive’ and keeping the food for themselves. During the test, the dog had the options to lead one of these partners to one of the three potential food locations: one contained a favoured food item, the other a non-preferred food item and the third remained empty. After having led one of the partners, the dog always had the possibility of leading its cooperative owner to one of the food locations. Therefore, a dog would have a direct benefit from misleading the competitive partner since it would then get another chance to receive the preferred food from the owner. On the first test day, the dogs led the cooperative partner to the preferred food box more often than expected by chance and more often than the competitive partner. On the second day, they even led the competitive partner less often to the preferred food than expected by chance and more often to the empty box than the cooperative partner. These results show that dogs distinguished between the cooperative and the competitive partner, and indicate the flexibility of dogs to adjust their behaviour and that they are able to use tactical deception.     

Trends of the Voter's Mind

Abstract

Casual conversations were recorded as elderly persons routinely walked their dogs through a familiar mobile home park in the United States. Control observations included walks without dogs by owners and non-owners of dogs. All owners talked to and about their dogs. Transcribed conversations indicated that dogs were a primary focus of conversation. A majority of sentences to dogs were imperatives; the owners were instructing the dogs. Dog owners frequently included dogs' names or nicknames in their sentences when they spoke to the dogs and made reference to the dogs' wishes or needs. Speaking to dogs was also associated with frequent repetition of sentences. Passersby talked to the owners about their dogs whether or not the dogs were present. When dog owners spoke with other people, their conversations often concerned activities that were occurring in the present, whereas conversations of non-owners focused on stories about past events. Dog owners reported taking twice as many daily walks as non-owners. Dog owners also reported significantly less dissatisfaction with their social, physical, and emotional states.     

Seeing with ears: Sightless humans' perception of dog bark provides a test for structural rules in vocal communication

Prerecorded family dog (Canis familiaris) barks were played back to groups of congenitally sightless, sightless with prior visual experience, and sighted people (none of whom had ever owned a dog). We found that blind people without any previous canine visual experiences can categorize accurately various dog barks recorded in different contexts, and their results are very close to those of sighted people in characterizing the emotional content of barks. These findings suggest that humans can recognize some of the most important motivational states reflecting, for example, fear or aggression in a dog's bark without any visual experience. It is very likely that this result can be generalized to other mammalian species—that is, no visual experience of another individual is needed for recognizing some of the most important motivational states of the caller.     

Determinants of perceived risk for HIV infection among police officers

Police officers often come into contact with persons who are considered members of high risk groups for HIV infection, such as intravenous drug users and prostitutes. The present exploratory study employs field research methodology to observe patrol officers in their work settings in urban and rural locations to investigate contributing factors to their perceived risk of HIV infection. Four notable findings emerged. First, departmental training may not lower fear or perceived risk of HIV infection among police officers. Second, awareness of modes of transmission may increase perceived risk among officers but awareness of and access to protective measures may decrease fear and perceived risk. Third, access to protective measures is not always perceived as enough to ensure safety for officers who are faced with administering first aid to bleeding persons who may be HIV positive. Fourth, “street wisdom” may give police officers an illusion of safety.     

A review of domestic dogs' (Canis familiaris) human-like behaviors: or why behavior analysts should stop worrying and love their dogs

Dogs likely were the first animals to be domesticated and as such have shared a common environment with humans for over ten thousand years. Only recently, however, has this species' behavior been subject to scientific scrutiny. Most of this work has been inspired by research in human cognitive psychology and suggests that in many ways dogs are more human-like than any other species, including nonhuman primates. Behavior analysts should add their expertise to the study of dog behavior, both to add objective behavioral analyses of experimental data and to effectively integrate this new knowledge into applied work with dogs.     

Why Do Some Owners Allow Their Dogs to Foul the Pavement? The Social Psychology of a Minor Rule Infraction1

This study combines observational, attitudinal, and self‐report measures, and compares a group of irresponsible dog owners who allow their dogs to foul with a control group of responsible owners who clean up after their dogs. The owners are compared on a variety of attitudinal and personal orientation measures. We observed 101 instances of dog fouling in both park and pavement, and 87 respondents subsequently returned questionnaires. The majority (59%) of people observed cleaned up after their dogs. The irresponsible owners were significantly more tolerant of fouling (dog feces were seen as natural waste and biodegradable) and were more likely to agree that the laws were illegitimate and restrictive.     

A dog at the keyboard: using arbitrary signs to communicate requests

As a consequence of domestication, dogs have a special readiness for communication with humans. We here investigate whether a dog might be able to acquire and consistently produce a set of arbitrary signs in her communication with humans, as was demonstrated in “linguistic” individuals of several species. A female mongrel dog was submitted to a training schedule in which, after basic command training and after acquiring the verbal labels of rewarding objects or activities, she learned to ask for such objects or activities by selecting lexigrams and pressing keys on a keyboard. Systematic records taken during spontaneous interaction with one of the experimenters showed that lexigrams were used in an appropriate, intentional way, in accordance with the immediate motivational context. The dog only utilized the keyboard in the experimenter’s presence and gazed to him more frequently after key pressing than before, an indication that lexigram use did have communicative content. Results suggest that dogs may be able to learn a conventional system of signs associated to specific objects and activities, functionally analogous to spontaneous soliciting behaviors and point to the potential fruitfulness of the keyboard/lexigram procedure for studying dog communication and cognition. This is the first report to systematically analyze the learning of arbitrary sign production in dogs. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Origins of fear of dogs in adults and children: the role of conditioning processes and prior familiarity with dogs.

One hundred adults and 30 children completed questionnaires to investigate fear of dogs. Dog fearful adults asked to recall the origins of their fear reported classical conditioning experiences more frequently than vicarious acquisition or informational transmission. Overall, however, there was no difference in the frequency of attacks reported by the fearful and non-fearful groups. Significantly more fearful than non-fearful adults reported little contact with dogs prior to the onset of their fear which suggests that early non-eventful exposure to dogs may prevent a conditioning event from producing a dog phobia. Most adults reported that their fear began in childhood, and dog fear were more frequently reported by children than by adults. In the aggregate, however, dog-fearful adults and children differed in several ways; children were more likely than adults to report having received warnings about dogs, but also to recognize the potential attractiveness of a friendly dog. Unlike dog-fearful children, dog-fearful adults reported many other fears in addition to their fear of dogs. A better understanding of fear of dogs in adults may depend on discovering why some dog-fearful children, but not others, apparently lose their fear of dogs as they become older.     

Police officers' use of evidence to elicit admissions in a fictitious criminal case

We examined how police officers planned to interview suspects in a situation where they lacked information about a critical phase of a crime (i.e., the time during which the crime took place) but possessed information about less critical phases of the crime (i.e., the time before and/or after the crime took place). The main focus was the officers' planned use of the available information (evidence) to elicit admissions about the critical phase. A survey was distributed to police officers (n  = 69) containing a fictitious murder case for which they were to prepare an interview with a suspect. The investigators planned to disclose the evidence more often in a strategic manner (obtaining the suspect's statement and exhausting alternative scenarios before revealing the evidence) than in a non‐strategic manner (revealing the evidence before requiring an explanation). The investigators' most frequently reported reason for their planned evidence use was to collect additional information about the particular phase to which the disclosed evidence pertained. It was rare that the investigators planned to disclose the evidence about a less critical phase of the crime in order to elicit admissions about the more critical phase (e.g., by disclosing the evidence to try to shift the suspect's counter‐interrogation strategy from less to more forthcoming). The investigators may benefit from recent research showing that strategic evidence disclosure can be used as a means to elicit admissions about a phase of a crime for which information is lacking.     

How dogs scan familiar and inverted faces: an eye movement study

Faces play an important role in communication and identity recognition in social animals. Domestic dogs often respond to human facial cues, but their face processing is weakly understood. In this study, facial inversion effect (deficits in face processing when the image is turned upside down) and responses to personal familiarity were tested using eye movement tracking. A total of 23 pet dogs and eight kennel dogs were compared to establish the effects of life experiences on their scanning behavior. All dogs preferred conspecific faces and showed great interest in the eye area, suggesting that they perceived images representing faces. Dogs fixated at the upright faces as long as the inverted faces, but the eye area of upright faces gathered longer total duration and greater relative fixation duration than the eye area of inverted stimuli, regardless of the species (dog or human) shown in the image. Personally, familiar faces and eyes attracted more fixations than the strange ones, suggesting that dogs are likely to recognize conspecific and human faces in photographs. The results imply that face scanning in dogs is guided not only by the physical properties of images, but also by semantic factors. In conclusion, in a free-viewing task, dogs seem to target their fixations at naturally salient and familiar items. Facial images were generally more attractive for pet dogs than kennel dogs, but living environment did not affect conspecific preference or inversion and familiarity responses, suggesting that the basic mechanisms of face processing in dogs could be hardwired or might develop under limited exposure.     

Suicide among German federal and state police officers

Most American studies report higher police officer suicide rates in comparison to age-matched populations. In the Federal Republic of Germany police organizations are comprised of Federal Customs, 16 state police, and 2 federal police organizations. A survey carried out in 1997 yielded higher suicide rates for police officers also in Germany in comparison to rates of the comparable age group (25 per 100,000 vs 20 per 100,000). The most commonly used suicide method was firearms (66-71%). Hypotheses often attribute this high suicidality among police officers to higher work stress than in other professions. Other hypotheses implicate individual variables such as psychiatric illnesses, alcoholism, and interpersonal and marital problems. A transactional model might explain these different views.     

Dog rivalry impacts following behavior in a decision-making task involving food

Dogs learn a great deal from humans and other dogs. Previous studies of socially influenced learning between dogs have typically used a highly trained demonstrator dog who is unfamiliar to the observer. Because of this, it is unknown how dynamics between familiar dogs may influence their likelihood of learning from each other. In this study, we tested dogs living together in two-dog households on whether individual dogs’ rivalry scores were associated with performance on a local enhancement task. Specifically, we wanted to know whether dog rivalry impacted whether an observer dog would approach a plate from which a demonstrator dog had eaten all available food, or whether the observer dog would approach the adjacent plate that still contained food. Dog rivalry scores were calculated using the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire and indicated each dog’s tendency to engage aggressively with the other household dog. Low-rivalry dogs were more likely to approach the empty plate than high-rivalry dogs when the observer dog was allowed to approach the plates immediately after the demonstrator had moved out of sight. This difference between low- and high-rivalry dogs disappeared, however, when observer dogs had to wait 5 s before approaching the plates. The same pattern was observed during a control condition when a human removed the food from a plate. Compared to low-rivalry dogs, high-rivalry dogs may pay less attention to other dogs due to a low tolerance for having other dogs in close proximity.