INBIOSUR   25013
INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS Y BIOMEDICAS DEL SUR
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Persistence in learned responses: A comparison of Animal Assisted Intervention and pet dogs
Autor/es:
DZIK, MARINA V.; CARBALLO, FABRICIO; CAVALLI, CAMILA M.; BENTOSELA, MARIANA
Revista:
JOURNAL OF VETERINARY BEHAVIOR-CLINICAL APPLICATIONS AND RESEARCH
Editorial:
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
Referencias:
Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2019 vol. 34 p. 22 - 29
ISSN:
1558-7878
Resumen:
Dogs participating in Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI) are prime candidates to assess how increased interaction with people modulates canine behavior. The aim of this work was to compare the behavior of AAI and pet dogs on three tasks following the same pattern: a) an acquisition phase in which dogs were reinforced for emitting a specific response and b) an extinction phase in which it was no longer reinforced. We evaluated 26 dogs (13 participating in AAI and 13 living as pets) on learning two sociocognitive tasks (gazing and object choice) and a nonsocial one (problem-solving). As clients do not always respond properly to their communicative interactions, AAI dogs often need to persevere in their communicative responses during their typical activities. Therefore, we hypothesized that AAI dogs would be more persistent than pet dogs, particularly during the extinction phases of the tests. Although no significant main effects of group were observed during the extinction phase of the gazing test, only pet dogs significantly decreased the time spent gazing at the experimenter during this phase, which indicates they gazed less as trials went on. In the object choice task, no differences between these groups were observed. Finally, in the problem-solving task, AAI dogs persisted significantly more in picking up bones even when the apparatus was empty and also spent more time interacting with it during extinction trials than pet dogs. Besides pre-existing behavioral characteristics, the combination of the higher exposure to people and not always being immediately reinforced during their work may affect AAI dogs´ persistence on some cognitive tasks. However, factors such as training levels and interaction with the experimenter during the task modulate this response. A deeper understanding about AAI dogs will shed light over the effects of increased social experience on dogs? cognition and is particularly relevant given the popularity of AAIs in the recent years.