Personality traits affecting judgement bias task performance in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Barnard, Shanis; Wells, Deborah L.; Milligan, Adam D.S.; Arnott, Gareth; Hepper, Peter

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-25224-y

Cited by 43 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…To avoid distractions, the JBT was carried out in a barren indoor area (approximately 6x6 m) within the two shelter facilities, and, for the pet dogs, in a testing room (5x5 m) at the Animal Behaviour Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. Data for the pet dogs were collected for another study [ 26 ] and raw data were re-analysed for this study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dogs had a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 40 trials to reach the learning criterion. This was set on the basis of other studies [ 26 , 27 , 32 ], so that for the preceding 3 positive trials and the preceding 3 negative trials, the longest latency to reach P was at least 0.5 seconds shorter than any of the latencies to reach N; this criterion was evaluated with each additional trial of training (rolling criteria). For each dog, the number of training trials required to reach the learning criterion was recorded.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cognitive bias paradigms borrowed from human studies have been modified and adapted several times to measure the psychological welfare of many non-human species (e.g. rats [ 18 ], starlings [ 19 ], bees [ 20 ], sheep [ 21 ], macaques [ 22 ], pigs [ 23 ], horses [ 24 ], calves [ 25 ]), including the domestic dog, Canis familiaris [ 26 – 28 ]. Despite the large number of studies that have used JBT as the golden standard to evaluate the affective state of non-human animals, various questions remain to be answered; results are still not unequivocal and are not always in line with predictions to the point that some of those studies have led to null results or to opposite findings to those expected [ 7 , 17 , 29 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Entering a shelter is a stressful event for dogs [ 45 ], and the kennel environment can potentially induce negative emotions in more vulnerable individuals (due to stressors including noise, social deprivation, confinement). To exclude the possibility of our results being reflective of a population bias, data from a study on family pet dogs tested with the same JBT paradigm [ 26 ] were re-analysed alongside the data collected from the sheltered dog cohort.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Using judgment bias test in pet and shelter dogs (Canis familiaris): Methodological and statistical caveats

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is now widely agreed that a positive affective state is a crucial component of animal well-being. The judgment bias test represents a widespread tool used to assess animals’ optimistic/pessimistic attitude and to evaluate their emotional state and welfare. Judgment bias tests have been used several times with dogs ( Canis familiaris ), in most cases using a spatial test with a bowl placed in ambiguous positions located between a relatively positive trained location (P) which contains a baited bowl and a relatively negative trained location (N) which contains an empty bowl. The latency to approach the bowl in the ambiguous locations is an indicator of the dog’s expectation of a positive/negative outcome. However, results from such tests are often inconclusive. For the present study, the judgment bias test performance of 51 shelter dogs and 40 pet dogs was thoroughly analysed. A pattern emerged with shelter dogs behaving in a more pessimistic-like way than pet dogs. However, this difference between the two populations was detected only when analysing the raw latencies to reach the locations and not the more commonly applied adjusted score (i.e. average latency values). Furthermore, several methodological caveats were found. First of all, a non-negligible percentage of dogs did not pass the training phase, possibly due to the experimental paradigm not being fully suited for this species. Second, results showed a high intra-dog variability in response to the trained locations, i.e. the dogs’ responses were not consistent throughout the test, suggesting that animals may not have fully learned the association between locations and their outcomes. Third, dogs did not always behave differently towards adjacent locations, raising doubts about the animals’ ability to discriminate between locations. Finally, a potential influence of the researcher’s presence on dogs’ performance emerged from analyses. The implications of these findings and potential solutions are discussed.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Using judgment bias test in pet and shelter dogs (Canis familiaris): Methodological and statistical caveats

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The possibility that animals exhibit heritable and consistent variation in behaviour within individuals and across time and contexts is also referred to as behavioural syndromes or personality [6]. Recently, behavioural traits related to anxiousness and aggressiveness in dogs have been shown to be related to affective state [7] and in humans, behavioural traits related to "boldness", such as extroversion, are associated with positive affect [8]. One behavioural trait that has been examined in fish probably more than other taxa is the bold/shy axis [9,10], where boldness is the reaction to a situation perceived as dangerous, such as foraging in the presence of a predator.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggressive encounters lead to negative affective state in fish

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Animals show various behavioural, neural and physiological changes in response to losing aggressive encounters. Here, we investigated affective state, which are emotion-like processes influenced by positive or negative experiences, in a territorial fish following aggressive encounters and explore links to bold/shy behavioural traits. Eighteen 15-month old Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii) received three tests in order to determine bold/shy behavioural traits then underwent a typical go/no-go judgement bias (JB) test. The JB apparatus had five adjacent chambers with access provided by a sliding door and fish underwent a training procedure to enter a chamber at one end of the apparatus to receive a food reward but were chased using a net if they entered the chamber at the opposite end. Only one third (N = 6) of fish successfully completed the training procedure (trained fish), and the remaining 12 fish failed to reach the learning criterion (untrained fish). Trained fish housed with a larger aggressive Murray cod for 24 h were significantly less likely to enter intermediate chambers during probe tests compared to control fish, demonstrating a pessimistic response. Trained fish showed "bolder" responses in emergence and conspecific inspection tests than untrained fish, suggesting that shyer individuals were less able to apply a learned behaviour in a novel environment. Our limited sample was biased towards bold individuals but supports the hypothesis that losing an aggressive encounter leads to pessimistic decision-making.

show abstract

Effects of early and later life environmental enrichment and personality on attention bias in pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus)

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigated effects of early and later life housing on attention bias, as an indicator of affective state, in pigs differing in coping style [reactive (LR) vs. proactive (HR)]. Pigs (n = 128) in barren or enriched housing from birth (B1 vs. E1) that experienced either a switch in housing at 7 weeks of age or not (creating B1B2, B1E2, E1E2, and E1B2 treatments), were studied in a 180-s attention bias test at 11 weeks. Pigs exposed to a 10-s-auditory-and-sudden-motion threat in the test arena paid more attention to the location of the threat, were more vigilant, showed less eating, more walking and were more likely to utter high-pitched vocalisations than non-threat pigs. During threat presence, HR pigs from post-switch enriched housing (E2-HR, i.e., B1E2 + E1E2) showed more vigilance but less exploration than others. After threat removal, no effects were found on time spent paying attention to the threat, vigilance, and eating, but E2-HR pigs paid attention to the threat more frequently, were more likely to utter high-pitched vocalisations and walked more compared to (part of) other groups, suggesting the most negative affective state in these animals. E2 pigs grunted more than B2 pigs. Thus, current housing, but not early life housing, affected behaviour in a personality-dependent manner in this attention bias test. Housing effects were opposite to expectation, possibly due to the short-term effect of the relative contrast between the home pens of the pigs and the test room. This potentially overruled putative long-term effects of environmental conditions on attention bias.

show abstract

Personality traits affecting judgement bias task performance in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Cited by 43 publications

References 38 publications

Using judgment bias test in pet and shelter dogs (Canis familiaris): Methodological and statistical caveats

Using judgment bias test in pet and shelter dogs (Canis familiaris): Methodological and statistical caveats

Aggressive encounters lead to negative affective state in fish

Effects of early and later life environmental enrichment and personality on attention bias in pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About