What factors are associated with positive effects of dog ownership in families with children with autism spectrum disorder? The development of the Lincoln Autism Pet Dog Impact Scale

Scientific literature exploring the value of assistance dogs to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is rapidly emerging. However, there is comparably less literature reporting the effects of pet (as opposed to assistance) dogs to these children. In particular, there are no known validated scales which assess how children may alter their behaviours in the presence of the dog, to evaluate the efficacy of pet dogs to these families. Additionally, given the highly individualised nature of ASD it is likely that some children and families gain more benefits from dog ownership than others, yet no research has reported the effect of individual differences. This pilot study reports the development of a 28-item scale based on the perceived impact of a pet dog on a child with autism by parents (Lincoln Autism Pet Dog Impact Scale, LAPDIS). The scale is comprised of three mathematically derived factors: Adaptability, Social Skills and Conflict Management. We assessed how individual differences (aspects) may be associated with scores on these three factors. Family Aspects and Dog Aspects were not significantly associated with ratings on the three factors, but Child Aspects (including: contact with horses, child age, disability level and language abilities) were related to impact of the dog on all factors. Training Aspects were related to scores on Social Skills (formal training with children with ASD and dogs and attendance at PAWS workshops run by Dogs for Good). These results suggest that individual differences associated with the child and the training approach may be important considerations for a positive impact from dog ownership on families with children with ASD. Differences in family features and the dog may not be so important, but may be worthy of further investigations given the early stage of development in this field

Factors affecting response of dogs to obedience instruction: a field and experimental study

Communication is an essential component of the translation of learning theory into the practical control of the behaviour of dogs. A handler sends a signal (e.g. a command), to which their dog responds. This response is dependent on the dog’s perception of the signal rather than the intention of the sender. Previous research has shown that a dog’s response can be influenced by specific changes in the verbal and non-verbal qualities of signals (i.e. the commands) used, but there has been little scientific evaluation of what happens in practice. Therefore in a first study, 56 dog handlers were videotaped giving their dogs a “sit” command and the significance of verbal and non-verbal factors on response was analyzed. Two factors were associated with a significant decrease in obedience: the dog’s attention to its handler and the handler giving additional verbal information preceding the actual verbal command. Based on these results, a second more controlled study was run with 12 dogs that were trained to a new (“uff”, i.e. jumping onto a raised surface) and a known (“sit”, “down” or “paw”) command. Once trained to predefined criteria, dogs were tested for their responsiveness with each of three additional types of verbal information preceding the command: the dog’s name, the dog’s name followed by a pause of 2 seconds and a “novel word”, i.e. a word with no established relationships in this context (“Banane”). The results suggest that the addition of the novel word significantly reduced response to both the known (p = 0.014) and the new (p = 0.014) commands. The name plus a pause preceding the command significantly reduced the response to the new command (p = 0.043), but not the known one. The use of the name before the command without a pause had no significant effect on performance. The dogs’ ability to generalize learned commands from the training context to a new context was tested by going through the same procedure in an unfamiliar environment. There was a significant reduction in correct responses only to the new command independent of the preceding verbal information (name (p = 0.028), name plus pause (p = 0.022) and novel word (p = 0.011)). This suggests that dogs may have more difficulties generalizing a less well-established command than an already known command

Recognising the facial expression of frustration in the horse during feeding period

Horses often present negative emotional states which are frequently poorly recognised, with much of our understanding of horse expressions based on anecdotes, rather than scientific evidence. The aim of this project was to identify potential facial markers of emotional states. 31 horses, aged between 2 and 23 years old (mean ± SD: 11.5 years, ± 6.6) and various genders (1 male, 10 geldings and 20 females) took part in the study. They were tested in three different scenarios involving the potential availability of food. Horses were trained to anticipate a reward after 10 s and then tested across the following three situations. Anticipation of a reward, considered a positive emotional state; frustration at waiting for a reward and disappointment at the loss of the reward - both considered negative emotional states. Tests were conducted in a stable with a feeding device fixed outside the stable within reach of the horse. Analysis of video recordings of facial expressions of the horses was undertaken using the Horse Facial Action Coding System (EquiFACS), an objective system for coding facial movements on the basis of the contraction of underlying muscles, as well as their behaviours. Specific facial markers associated with anticipation could not be characterised, however, we found that the occurrence of 9 actions and behaviours differed significantly between the two situations predicted to induce frustration and disappointment during the feeding period. The frustration phase was characterised by a higher likelihood of ‘eye white increase’ (AD1), ‘ear rotator’ (EAD104), and ‘biting feeder’ compared to the ‘disappointment’ situations. By contrast, ‘blink’ (AU145), ‘nostril lift’ (AUH13), ‘tongue show’ (AD19), ‘chewing’ (AD81) and ‘licking feeder’ were more likely in the ‘disappointment’ phase than in the ‘frustration’ situation. There was also a general gender effect with females more likely to blink than males. The findings of this research may help differentiate frustration and disappointment at least during the feeding period

Can stimulus enhancement explain the apparent success of the model-rival technique in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)?

The model-rival technique is a method of training whereby an animal learns the distinguishing features of a target object, such as name and colour, by observing a trainer and a potential competitor engage in conversation about these features. In this study the apparent effectiveness of the model-rival technique in training dogs to perform a selection-retrieval task by McKinley and Young McKinley, S., Young, R.J., 2003. The efficacy of the model-rival method when compared with operant conditioning for training domestic dogs to perform a retrieval-selection task. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 81, 357-365 was investigated to evaluate the hypothesis that simpler forms of learning may be responsible for the results. This was tested by repeating McKinley and Young's model-rival training method and comparing the results to those of training sessions devised to include different forms of stimulus enhancement of the object to be retrieved. These training sessions involved: minimal enhancement, during which the experimenters made no interactions with the target object; indirect stimulus enhancement, during which both experimenters switched their gaze between the dog and the target object; or direct stimulus enhancement, during which one of the experimenters held the target object. It was found that only the model-rival and direct enhancement methods resulted in a significant number of dogs successfully completing the selection-retrieval test. There was also evidence to suggest that with the direct stimulus enhancement training method dogs learned quicker than with the model-rival training method. It was concluded that dogs are able to learn to retrieve a named object in a selection-retrieval task as a result of simple stimulus enhancement, without necessarily understanding the complex cognitive processes which underpin learning in the model-rival process. c 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

What can ecosystems learn? Expanding evolutionary ecology with learning theory

Background: The structure and organisation of ecological interactions within an ecosystem is modified by the evolution and coevolution of the individual species it contains. Understanding how historical conditions have shaped this architecture is vital for understanding system responses to change at scales from the microbial upwards. However, in the absence of a group selection process, the collective behaviours and ecosystem functions exhibited by the whole community cannot be organised or adapted in a Darwinian sense. A long-standing open question thus persists: Are there alternative organising principles that enable us to understand and predict how the coevolution of the component species creates and maintains complex collective behaviours exhibited by the ecosystem as a whole?Results: Here we answer this question by incorporating principles from connectionist learning, a previously unrelated discipline already using well-developed theories on how emergent behaviours arise in simple networks. Specifically, we show conditions where natural selection on ecological interactions is functionally equivalent to a simple type of connectionist learning, ‘unsupervised learning’, well-known in neural-network models of cognitive systems to produce many non-trivial collective behaviours. Accordingly, we find that a community can self-organise in a well-defined and non-trivial sense without selection at the community level; its organisation can be conditioned by past experience in the same sense as connectionist learning models habituate to stimuli. This conditioning drives the community to form a distributed ecological memory of multiple past states, causing the community to: a) converge to these states from any random initial composition; b) accurately restore historical compositions from small fragments; c) recover a state composition following disturbance; and d) to correctly classify ambiguous initial compositions according to their similarity to learned compositions. We examine how the formation of alternative stable states alters the community’s response to changing environmental forcing, and we identify conditions under which the ecosystem exhibits hysteresis with potential for catastrophic regime shifts.Conclusions: This work highlights the potential of connectionist theory to expand our understanding of evo-eco dynamics and collective ecological behaviours. Within this framework we find that, despite not being a Darwinian unit, ecological communities can behave like connectionist learning systems, creating internal conditions that habituate to past environmental conditions and actively recalling those conditions.Theoretical ecology, Communityassembly, Network structures, Ecological memory, Associative learning, Regime shifts, Community matrix*Correspondence

Testing of behavioural asymmetries as markers for brain lateralization of emotional states in pet dogs: A critical review

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) hold a unique position in human society, particularly in their role as social companions; as such, it is important to understand their emotional lives. There has been growing interest in studying behavioural biases in dogs as indirect markers (reflecting lateralized brain activity) of their emotional states. In this paper, we not only review the previous literature on emotion-related behavioural lateralization in dogs, but also propose and apply the concept of evidential weight to previous research. This allows us to examine different hypotheses about emotion-related brain asymmetries (i.e., Right-Hemisphere-, Valence-, Approach-Withdrawal-Hypothesis) on the basis of a “likelihood-ist” concept of evidence. We argue that previous studies have not been able to discriminate well between competing hypotheses and tended to focus on confirmation bias than critically assess different hypotheses; as such there is a strong case for more systematic investigation to pull these theories apart. We present the areas for future research and explain their importance for understanding the emotional lives of dogs

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) grieve over the loss of a conspecific.

Behavioural reactions towards a dead conspecific have been observed rarely in wild canids and there is no documented scientific evidence of grief in pet dogs. A quantitative analysis of grief-related responses in both dogs and owners was conducted, using the validated online Mourning Dog Questionnaire. The survey was completed by 426 Italian adults who had owned at least two dogs, one of whom died while the other was still alive. This research aims to explore whether, how and what a dog may experience over the loss of a companion dog. Multiple logistic regression indicates that both a friendly or parental relationship between two dogs but also the fact that dogs used to share food and the owner's grief and anger are principal predictors of negative behavioural changes. According to dog owners' answers, the surviving dog after the death of the companion dog changed both in terms of activities ("playing", "sleeping", and "eating") and emotions (fearfulness), which occurred as a function of the quality of the relationship between the two animals. By contrast, the time the two dogs had spent together had no effect on the behaviours of surviving dog. Owner perceptions about their dog's reactions and emotions were not related to the memory or suffering of the event that tended to diminish over time. These findings indicate that a dog may show grief-related behavioural and emotional patterns when a close conspecific dies, with aspects of the latter possibly related to the owner's emotional status

Evolutionary connectionism: algorithmic principles underlying the evolution of biological organisation in evo-devo, evo-eco and evolutionary transitions

The mechanisms of variation, selection and inheritance, on which evolution by natural selection depends, are not fixed over evolutionary time. Current evolutionary biology is increasingly focussed on understanding how the evolution of developmental organisations modifies the distribution of phenotypic variation, the evolution of ecological relationships modifies the selective environment, and the evolution of reproductive relationships modifies the heritability of the evolutionary unit. The major transitions in evolution, in particular, involve radical changes in developmental, ecological and reproductive organisations that instantiate variation, selection and inheritance at a higher level of biological organisation. However, current evolutionary theory is poorly equipped to describe how these organisations change over evolutionary time and especially how that results in adaptive complexes at successive scales of organisation (the key problem is that evolution is self-referential, i.e. the products of evolution change the parameters of the evolutionary process). Here we first reinterpret the central open questions in these domains from a perspective that emphasises the common underlying themes. We then synthesise the findings from a developing body of work that is building a new theoretical approach to these questions by converting well-understood theory and results from models of cognitive learning. Specifically, connectionist models of memory and learning demonstrate how simple incremental mechanisms, adjusting the relationships between individually-simple components, can produce organisations that exhibit complex system-level behaviours and improve the adaptive capabilities of the system. We use the term “evolutionary connectionism” to recognise that, by functionally equivalent processes, natural selection acting on the relationships within and between evolutionary entities can result in organisations that produce complex system-level behaviours in evolutionary systems and modify the adaptive capabilities of natural selection over time. We review the evidence supporting the functional equivalences between the domains of learning and of evolution, and discuss the potential for this to resolve conceptual problems in our understanding of the evolution of developmental, ecological and reproductive organisations and, in particular, the major evolutionary transitions

Mutations in SLC25A22: hyperprolinaemia, vacuolated fibroblasts and presentation with developmental delay

Mutations in SLC25A22 are known to cause neonatal epileptic encephalopathy and migrating partial seizures in infancy. Using whole exome sequencing we identified four novel SLC25A22 mutations in six children from three families. Five patients presented clinical features similar to those in the literature including hypotonia, refractory neonatal‐onset seizures and developmental delay. However, the sixth patients presented atypically with isolated developmental delay, developing late‐onset (absence) seizures only at 7 years of age. Abnormal metabolite levels have not been documented in the nine patients described previously. One patient in our series was referred to the metabolic clinic because of persistent hyperprolinaemia and another three had raised plasma proline when tested. Analysis of the post‐prandial plasma amino acid response in one patient showed abnormally high concentrations of several amino acids. This suggested that, in the fed state, when amino acids are the preferred fuel for the liver, trans‐deamination of amino acids requires transportation of glutamate into liver mitochondria by SLC25A22 for deamination by glutamate dehydrogenase; SLC25A22 is an important mitochondrial glutamate transporter in liver as well as in brain. Electron microscopy of patient fibroblasts demonstrated widespread vacuolation containing neutral and phospho‐lipids as demonstrated by Oil Red O and Sudan Black tinctorial staining; this might be explained by impaired activity of the proline/pyrroline‐5‐carboxylate (P5C) shuttle if SLC25A22 transports pyrroline‐5‐carboxylate/glutamate‐γ‐semialdehyde as well as glutamate

Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) do not show signs of secure attachment to their owners

The Ainsworth Strange Situation Test (SST) has been widely used to demonstrate that the bond between both children and dogs to their primary carer typically meets the requirements of a secure attachment (i.e. the carer being perceived as a focus of safety and security in otherwise threatening environments), and has been adapted for cats with a similar claim made. However methodological problems in this latter research make the claim that the cat-owner bond is typically a secure attachment, operationally definable by its behaviour in the SST, questionable. We therefore developed an adapted version of the SST with the necessary methodological controls which include a full counterbalance of the procedure. A cross-over design experiment with 20 cat-owner pairs (10 each undertaking one of the two versions of the SST first) and continuous focal sampling was used to record the duration of a range of behavioural states expressed by the cats that might be useful for assessing secure attachment. Since data were not normally distributed, non-parametric analyses were used on those behaviours shown to be reliable across the two versions of the test (which excluded much cat behaviour). Although cats vocalised more when the owner rather the stranger left the cat with the other individual, there was no other evidence consistent with the interpretation of the bond between a cat and its owner meeting the requirements of a secure attachment. These results are consistent with the view that adult cats are typically quite autonomous, even in their social relationships, and not necessarily dependent on others to provide a sense of security and safety. It is concluded that alternative methods need to be developed to characterise the normal psychological features of the cat-owner bond