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Probing means-end understanding in dogs and wolves : comparing their learning in a magic vs. natural On/Off task
No full textMaster thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2023Compared to social cognition, the physical understanding of dogs and wolves have been relatively sparsely studied. Nevertheless, the available studies show poor performance of dogs in such cognitive studies, and it has been suggested that domestication, by human care relaxing natural selection on such skills of dogs, may have had a detrimental effect on dogs’ problem solving and physical cognition. In line with this, a former study had found that wolves learnt to solve a string-pulling task faster than dogs and had suggested that dogs may have a limited means-end understanding. Means to an end understanding is in general the understanding of more complex systems as when an object can have an impact on the movement of another one. However, as long as the animals need to learn to solve the task, it remains unclear whether the subjects understood the causal structure of the task or whether they solved it based on perceptual cues such as contact between reward and support. To address this problem, we compared whether the animals learn to solve the natural version of the support task faster than a counterintuitive, “magic” version. For this aim, we tested 2 groups of dogs and 2 groups of wolves. In the ON group (natural), animals could get the reward when pulling the board with the reward on it. In contrast, in the OFF group (magic) the animals could get the reward by pulling the OFF board (with the reward on the side of the board) and the reward did not move if the animals pulled the ON board We found no evidence that either the dogs or the wolves would have differentiated between the two conditions. The wolves chose randomly throughout their 20 sessions, whereas two dogs learnt to discriminate between the 2 boards with a similar speed in both groups. These results provide no evidence that either dogs or wolves would have a means-end understanding, but suggest faster associative learning in dogs than in wolves, which is in contrast with former studies. Future studies with bigger sample sizes and with more observations will have to confirm these results.Masterarbeit - Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien - 2023Im Gegensatz zur sozialen Kognition wurden die kognitiven Fähigkeiten von Hunden und Wölfen in Bezug auf das physikalische Verständnis kaum untersucht. Hier kommt hinzu, dass beispielsweise Hunde in den verfügbaren Studien schlecht abschneiden (Müller et a l. 2014). Die Domestizierungshypothese behauptet, dass Menschen die soziale und physikalische Kognition von Hunden durch die Domestizierung und Ontogenese beeinflusst haben (Lampe et al. 2017). Übereinstimmend damit hat eine frühere Studie herausgefunden das Wölfe bei einer string string- pulling Aufgabe besser abschneiden als Hunde und impliziert, dass Hunde ein limitiertes Verständnis von Mittel zum Zweck besitzen. Beim Mittel zum Zweck Verständnis geht es im Allgemeinen um das Verstehen von komplexen Systemen wie beispielsweise, wenn die Bewegung eines Objektes ein anderes mit bewegt. Dadurch, dass die Tiere lernen müssen dieses Problem zu lösen, bleibt es unklar, ob die Probanden das Problem basierend auf dem Verständnis der kausalen Zusammenhänge gelöst haben oder ob sie sichtbaren Hinweisen, wie dem Kontakt zwischen Belohnung und Hilfsmittel, gefolgt sind. Um dieses Problem zu adressieren, wurde die magische Gruppe eingeführt, in welcher die Belohnung neben dem Brett war und sich auf magische Weis e mit dem Brett bewegte. Zur Untersuchung, ob Tiere mit einer natürlichen Situation (Belohnung auf dem Brett) oder eine magischen (Belohnung neben dem Brett) schneller lernen, wurden zwei Gruppen mit Wölfen und zwei Gruppen mit Hunden gebildet. In der natürlichen Situation gab es ein Brett mit der Belohnung auf dem Brett, welche der Hund sich durch Rausziehen verdienen konnte. Das andere Brett war in dieser Gruppe mit einer Belohnung neben dem Brett, welche auch nicht durch heraus ziehen des Brettes verdient werden konnte versehen. In der magischen Gruppe war es genau umgedreht, d.h. das Tier konnte die Belohnung durch das Ziehen des Brettes mit der Belohnung nebendran erhalten und nicht durch das Ziehen des Brettes, auf dem die Belohnung scheinbar lag. Das Ergebnis zeigte keine Hinweise darauf, dass Wölfe oder Hunde ein Mittel zum Zweck Verständnis haben. Allerdings haben wir Hinweise darauf gefunden, Hunde (in beiden Gruppen) schneller lernen, was im Widerspruch mit vorangegangen Studien steht, die bei Wölfen eine bessere Lernfähigkeit aufwiesen. wiesen. Künftige Studien mit einer größeren Kohorte und mehr Beobachtungen werden notwendig sein um diese Ergebnisse zu bestätigen.Master thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2023Compared to social cognition, the physical understanding of dogs and wolves have been relatively sparsely studied. Nevertheless, the available studies show poor performance of dogs in such cognitive studies, and it has been suggested that domestication, by human care relaxing natural selection on such skills of dogs, may have had a detrimental effect on dogs’ problem solving and physical cognition. In line with this, a former study had found that wolves learnt to solve a string-pulling task faster than dogs and had suggested that dogs may have a limited means-end understanding. Means to an end understanding is in general the understanding of more complex systems as when an object can have an impact on the movement of another one. However, as long as the animals need to learn to solve the task, it remains unclear whether the subjects understood the causal structure of the task or whether they solved it based on perceptual cues such as contact between reward and support. To address this problem, we compared whether the animals learn to solve the natural version of the support task faster than a counterintuitive, “magic” version. For this aim, we tested 2 groups of dogs and 2 groups of wolves. In the ON group (natural), animals could get the reward when pulling the board with the reward on it. In contrast, in the OFF group (magic) the animals could get the reward by pulling the OFF board (with the reward on the side of the board) and the reward did not move if the animals pulled the ON board We found no evidence that either the dogs or the wolves would have differentiated between the two conditions. The wolves chose randomly throughout their 20 sessions, whereas two dogs learnt to discriminate between the 2 boards with a similar speed in both groups. These results provide no evidence that either dogs or wolves would have a means-end understanding, but suggest faster associative learning in dogs than in wolves, which is in contrast with former studies. Future studies with bigger sample sizes and with more observations will have to confirm these results
Food vs. toy : Exploring how reward type shapes dog search behaviour
No full textMaster thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2023Domestic dogs are renowned for their social cognition and proficient interactions with humans, yet comparatively little is known about how they represent and reason about the physical world around them. Specifically, while it is well-established that dogs do have an object permanence (i.e., can form mental representations of objects in their environment), it remains unclear how they represent different types of rewards, and how the nature of those rewards impacts their behaviour and performance in experimental tasks. This thesis explores two competing hypotheses, namely (a) that different types of rewards trigger the use of distinct cognitive strategies (inference and association) during object search, and (b) that dogs hold distinct mental representations for different types of rewards. Two groups of dogs are tested in a meticulously designed variation of the classic Piagetian invisible displacement task – one group with food and another with a toy as reward. Dogs see the reward (food or toy) “disappear” from a displacement device, after passing behind three hiding screens. Dogs are allowed to search for the reward, and their speed as they move between screens is measured. If dogs use inference by exclusion to find the reward, they should speed up after finding two empty screens, indicating their confidence in finding the reward behind the third screen. In contrast, the experiments yielded robust evidence that dogs tended to slow down as they approached the final screen, signifying a predominant reliance on associative strategies rather than inferential reasoning. Importantly, the reward type, be it food or a toy, did not significantly affect their search behaviour. That is, in this study we found no evidence that dogs would represent food and toy rewards differently or that these rewards would activate different cognitive strategies in dogs. These findings hold significance from practical and theoretical standpoints, and lay a solid methodological groundwork for further research distinguishing between behaviour rooted in logical inference and associative generalization across various species.Master thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2023Domestic dogs are renowned for their social cognition and proficient interactions with humans, yet comparatively little is known about how they represent and reason about the physical world around them. Specifically, while it is well-established that dogs do have an object permanence (i.e., can form mental representations of objects in their environment), it remains unclear how they represent different types of rewards, and how the nature of those rewards impacts their behaviour and performance in experimental tasks. This thesis explores two competing hypotheses, namely (a) that different types of rewards trigger the use of distinct cognitive strategies (inference and association) during object search, and (b) that dogs hold distinct mental representations for different types of rewards. Two groups of dogs are tested in a meticulously designed variation of the classic Piagetian invisible displacement task – one group with food and another with a toy as reward. Dogs see the reward (food or toy) “disappear” from a displacement device, after passing behind three hiding screens. Dogs are allowed to search for the reward, and their speed as they move between screens is measured. If dogs use inference by exclusion to find the reward, they should speed up after finding two empty screens, indicating their confidence in finding the reward behind the third screen. In contrast, the experiments yielded robust evidence that dogs tended to slow down as they approached the final screen, signifying a predominant reliance on associative strategies rather than inferential reasoning. Importantly, the reward type, be it food or a toy, did not significantly affect their search behaviour. That is, in this study we found no evidence that dogs would represent food and toy rewards differently or that these rewards would activate different cognitive strategies in dogs. These findings hold significance from practical and theoretical standpoints, and lay a solid methodological groundwork for further research distinguishing between behaviour rooted in logical inference and associative generalization across various species.Masterarbeit - Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien - 2023Hunde sind bekannt für ihre soziale Kognition und ihre geschickten Interaktionen mit Menschen. Dennoch ist vergleichsweise wenig darüber bekannt, wie sie die physische Welt um sich herum wahrnehmen und in ihr interagieren. Insbesondere ist es zwar bekannt, dass Hunde über Objektpermanenz verfügen (d.h., mentale Vorstellungen von Objekten in ihrer Umgebung bilden können), aber es bleibt unklar, wie sie z.B. verschiedene Arten von Belohnungen wahrnehmen und wie die Art der Belohnungen ihr Verhalten und ihre Leistung in experimentellen Aufgaben beeinflusst. Diese Dissertation untersucht zwei konkurrierende Hypothesen, nämlich (a), dass verschiedene Arten von Belohnungen die Verwendung unterschiedlicher kognitiver Strategien (Inferenz und Assoziation) während der Objektsuche auslösen, und (b), dass Hunde unterschiedliche mentale Vorstellungen für verschiedene Arten von Belohnungen haben. Zwei Gruppen von Hunden werden in einer Variation der klassischen Piaget\u27schen Aufgabe zur nicht sichtbaren Verschiebung getestet - eine Gruppe mit Nahrung und eine andere mit einem Spielzeug als Belohnung. Die Hunde beobachten, wie die Belohnung (Nahrung oder Spielzeug) hinter drei Versteckschirmen verschwindet. Die Hunde dürfen nach der Belohnung suchen, und ihre Geschwindigkeit, während sie sich zwischen den Bildschirmen bewegen, wird gemessen. Wenn Hunde Inferenz durch Ausschluss verwenden, beschleunigen sie nach dem sie bereits zwei leere Bildschrime vorgefunden haben, da sie nun sicher scheinen die Belohung hinter dem dritten Bildschirm vorzufinden. Im Gegensatz dazu lieferten die Experimente robuste Beweise dafür, dass die Hunde dazu neigten, sich zu verlangsamen, wenn sie sich dem letzten Bildschirm näherten, was auf eine überwiegende Abhängigkeit von assoziativen Strategien hinweist, anstatt von inferentialem Denken. Wichtig ist, dass die Art der Belohnung, sei es Nahrung oder ein Spielzeug, ihr Suchverhalten nicht signifikant beeinflusste. In dieser Studie fanden wir also keine Hinweise darauf, dass Hunde Nahrungs- und Spielzeugbelohnungen unterschiedlich repräsentieren würden oder dass diese Belohnungen verschiedene kognitive Strategien bei Hunden aktivieren. Diese Erkenntnisse sind von praktischer und theoretischer Bedeutung und legen eine solide methodische Grundlage für weitere Forschungen zur Unterscheidung zwischen Verhalten, das auf logischer Inferenz und assoziativer Verallgemeinerung bei verschiedenen Arten basiert
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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