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To promote collaboration across canine science, address replicability issues, and advance open science practices within animal cognition, we have launched the ManyDogs consortium, modeled on similar ManyX projects in other fields. We aimed to create a collaborative network that (a) uses large, diverse samples to investigate and replicate findings, (b) promotes open science practices of pre-registering hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans, (c) investigates the influence of differences across populations and breeds, and (d) examines how different research methods and testing environments influence the robustness of results. Our first study combines a phenomenon that appears to be highly reliable—dogs’ ability to follow human pointing—with a question that remains controversial: do dogs interpret pointing as a social communicative gesture or as a simple associative cue? We collected data (N = 455) from 20 research sites on two conditions of a 2-alternative object choice task: (1) Ostensive (pointing to a baited cup after making eye-contact and saying the dog’s name); (2) Non-ostensive (pointing without eye-contact, after a throat-clearing auditory control cue). Comparing performance between conditions, while both were significantly above chance, there was no significant difference in dogs’ responses. This result was consistent across sites. Further, we found that dogs followed contralateral, momentary pointing at lower rates than has been reported in prior research, suggesting that there are limits to the robustness of point-following behavior: not all pointing styles are equally likely to elicit a response. Together, these findings underscore the important role of procedural details in study design and the broader need for replication studies in canine science.
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Do Owners Know How Impulsive Their Dogs Are?
Impulsivity is an important behavioral trait in dogs that affects many aspects of their relationship with humans. But how well do owners know their dog’s levels of impulsivity? Two studies have investigated how owner perceptions of their dog’s impulsivity correlate with the distance traveled in a spatial impulsivity task requiring choices between smaller, closer vs. larger, more distant food treats (Brady et al., 2018; Mongillo et al., 2019). However, these studies have demonstrated mixed results. The current project aimed to replicate these studies by correlating owner responses to the Dog Impulsivity Assessment Survey (DIAS) and the dog’s maximum distance traveled in a spatial impulsivity task. We found that neither the DIAS overall score nor its three subcomponent scores correlated with dogs’ distance traveled. This result replicates Mongillo et al.’s lack of a relationship but does not replicate Brady et al.’s effect, questioning the generalizability of owner reports of dog impulsivity. The lack of replication could result from differences in methodology and sample populations, but it raises intriguing questions about possible differences in dog characteristics and owner knowledge of their dogs across cultures.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1658837
- PAR ID:
- 10394472
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Animal Behavior and Cognition
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2372-5052
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 261 to 286
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.26451/abc.09.03.02.2022
