Comprehension and utilisation of pointing gestures and gazing in dog–human communication in relatively complex situations

The aim of the present investigation was to study the visual communication between humans and dogs in relatively complex situations. In the present research, we have modelled more lifelike situations in contrast to previous studies which often relied on using only two potential hiding locations and direct association between the communicative signal and the signalled object. In Study 1, we have provided the dogs with four potential hiding locations, two on each side of the experimenter to see whether dogs are able to choose the correct location based on the pointing gesture. In Study 2, dogs had to rely on a sequence of pointing gestures displayed by two different experimenters. We have investigated whether dogs are able to recognise an ‘indirect signal’, that is, a pointing toward a pointer. In Study 3, we have examined whether dogs can understand indirect information about a hidden object and direct the owner to the particular location. Study 1 has revealed that dogs are unlikely to rely on extrapolating precise linear vectors along the pointing arm when relying on human pointing gestures. Instead, they rely on a simple rule of following the side of the human gesturing. If there were more targets on the same side of the human, they showed a preference for the targets closer to the human. Study 2 has shown that dogs are able to rely on indirect pointing gestures but the individual performances suggest that this skill may be restricted to a certain level of complexity. In Study 3, we have found that dogs are able to localise the hidden object by utilising indirect human signals, and they are able to convey this information to their owner.     

Does the A-not-B error in adult pet dogs indicate sensitivity to human communication?

Recent dog-infant comparisons have indicated that the experimenter's communicative signals in object hide-and-search tasks increase the probability of perseverative (A-not-B) errors in both species (Topál et al. 2009). These behaviourally similar results, however, might reflect different mechanisms in dogs and in children. Similar errors may occur if the motor response of retrieving the object during the A trials cannot be inhibited in the B trials or if the experimenter's movements and signals toward the A hiding place in the B trials ('sham-baiting') distract the dogs' attention. In order to test these hypotheses, we tested dogs similarly to Topál et al. (2009) but eliminated the motor search in the A trials and 'sham-baiting' in the B trials. We found that neither an inability to inhibit previously rewarded motor response nor insufficiencies in their working memory and/or attention skills can explain dogs' erroneous choices. Further, we replicated the finding that dogs have a strong tendency to commit the A-not-B error after ostensive-communicative hiding and demonstrated the crucial effect of socio-communicative cues as the A-not-B error diminishes when location B is ostensively enhanced. These findings further support the hypothesis that the dogs' A-not-B error may reflect a special sensitivity to human communicative cues. Such object-hiding and search tasks provide a typical case for how susceptibility to human social signals could (mis)lead domestic dogs.     

When local processing increases the appeal of healthy options

People often encounter self-control challenges in complex everyday environments in which objects that promote a given goal (e.g., to eat healthily) are mixed together with objects that obstruct that goal. For example, healthy and unhealthy food choices are often mixed together in restaurant menus. Because local processing facilitates attention to low-level details, we expect that it may play an important role in these complex situations. In the present studies, we test the hypothesis that local processing supports self-control when goal items and temptations are contextually paired. As predicted, our findings revealed that local processing (relative to global processing) increased evaluations of healthy items when those items were presented together with unhealthy items. As hypothesized, this effect of local processing only occurred when healthy and unhealthy foods were presented as complementary – not competing – options, suggesting that local processing may increase evaluations of healthy options by decreasing the extent to which individuals accept environmental cues that healthy and unhealthy foods belong together. These findings support recent research demonstrating that despite strong evidence of the advantages of global processing for self-control, local processing may also support self-control efforts in some important everyday situations.     

Development of a Facebook Addiction Scale

The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS), initially a pool of 18 items, three reflecting each of the six core elements of addiction (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse), was constructed and administered to 423 students together with several other standardized self-report scales (Addictive Tendencies Scale, Online Sociability Scale, Facebook Attitude Scale, NEO-FFI, BIS/BAS scales, and Sleep questions). That item within each of the six addiction elements with the highest corrected item-total correlation was retained in the final scale. The factor structure of the scale was good (RMSEA = .046, CFI = .99) and coefficient alpha was .83. The 3-week test-retest reliability coefficient was .82. The scores converged with scores for other scales of Facebook activity. Also, they were positively related to Neuroticism and Extraversion, and negatively related to Conscientiousness. High scores on the new scale were associated with delayed bedtimes and rising times.     

Development of a work addiction scale

Andreassen, C. S., Griffiths, M. D., Hetland, J. & Pallesen, S. (2012). Development of a work addiction scale. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 265–272. Research into excessive work has gained increasing attention over the last 20 years. Terms such as “workaholism,”“work addiction” and “excessive work” have been used interchangeably. Given the increase in empirical research, this study presents the development of the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS), a new psychometrically validated scale for the assessment of work addiction. A pool of 14 items, with two reflecting each of seven core elements of addiction (i.e., salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, relapse, and problems) was initially constructed. The items were then administered to two samples, one recruited by a web survey following a television broadcast about workaholism (n = 11,769) and one comprising participants in the second wave of a longitudinal internet‐based survey about working life (n = 368). The items with the highest corrected item‐total correlation from within each of the seven addiction elements were retained in the final scale. The assumed one‐factor solution of the refined seven‐item scale was acceptable (root mean square error of approximation = 0.077, Comparative Fit Index = 0.96, Tucker‐Lewis Index = 0.95) and the internal reliability of the two samples were 0.84 and 0.80, respectively. The scores of the BWAS converged with scores on other workaholism scales, except for a Work Enjoyment subscale. A suggested cut‐off for categorization of workaholics showed good discriminative ability in terms of working hours, leadership position, and subjective health complaints. It is concluded that the BWAS has good psychometric properties.     

Facilitating and inhibiting effects of priming and selection criteria in a sequence of dichotic listening trials

Competing models of attention make different predictions of how priming from recent stimulus processing could interact with intended selection. The present experiment examined the interaction between exogenous attention and endogenous priming across trial sequences. A sound cue directed attention to left, right or both sides before a dichotic syllable pair was presented. Participants were asked to report one syllable from each trial. Results showed that responses were slower on trials where one of the presented syllables had also been presented on the previous trial. Within these trials, the repeated syllable was selected less frequently, and the responses doing so were slower. Examined according to response choice on the preceding trial, syllables that had been ignored on the preceding trial tended to be ignored on the current trial (negative priming), while syllables that had been selected on the preceding trial tended to be selected on the current trial (positive priming). Responses that followed these selection biases were faster than responses that did not. Response selection was also influenced by the attention direction cue for the current trial, but not by the cue presented on the preceding trial. The results support an attentional model where traces from the preceding processing are retained, and current selection is biased to minimize cognitive conflict between recent and current processing. Negative priming appears to be due to after-effects of preceding processing, independently of the intentions behind that processing. The study accounts for positive and negative priming of dichotic listening sequences within an established, computationally viable biased competition framework.     

Adolescent smoking behavior and outcome expectancies

Adolescent smoking behavior is assumed to be associated with smoking outcome expectancies. Results in this paper are based on data from the control group of two data collections among Norwegian secondary school students taken approximately 30 months apart (T1 and T2). The dimensionality of smoking outcome expectancies was the same at both time points, revealing three components ("Addicted", "Not harmful" and "Social"). After correction for attenuation, the Pearson's correlation between T1 and T2 was 0.41 for the total sumscore, indicating low to moderate relative stability. When examining smoking expectancy sumscore means by smoking habits at T1 and T2, never smokers were different from smokers on both occasions. Never smokers scored low on "Social" and "Not harmful", and high on "Addictive". All associations were statistically significant (p < 0.001). The "Social" dimension was the strongest predictor of smoking behavior at T1 and T2. One of the outcome expectancy sumscores ("Addictive") at T1 predicted smoking habits at T2 after controlling for smoking habits at T1 (p < 0.01). This predictor was significant also after entering outcome expectancy sumscores at T2 into the model (p < 0.05). These results indicate that outcome expectations other than the health-related ones should be paid attention to when planning new prevention programs.     

Generalizing parametric models by introducing trial-by-trial parameter variability: The case of TVA

We identify two biases in the traditional use of Bundesen’s Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) and show that they can be substantially reduced by introducing trial-by-trial variability in the model. We analyze whole and partial report data from a comprehensive empirical study with 347 participants and elaborate on Bayesian model selection theory for quantifying the advantage of trial-by-trial generalization in general. The analysis provides strong evidence of trial-by-trial variation in both the VSTM capacity parameter and perceptual threshold parameter of TVA. On average, the VSTM capacity bias was found to be at least half an item, while the perceptual threshold parameter was found to be underestimated by about 2 ms.