Emily E Bray

University of Arizona | UA · College of Veterinary Medicine

Across three experiments, we explored whether a dog's capacity for inhibitory control is stable or variable across decision-making contexts. In the social task, dogs were first exposed to the reputations of a stingy experimenter that never shared food and a generous experimenter who always shared food. In subsequent test trials, dogs were required...

Significance A successful guide dog must navigate a complex world, avoid distractions, and respond adaptively to unpredictable events. What leads to success? We followed 98 puppies from birth to adulthood. Puppies were enrolled in a training program where only ∼70% achieved success as guide dogs. More intense mothering early in life was associated...

To characterize the early ontogeny of dog cognition, we tested 168 domestic dog, Canis familiaris, puppies (97 females, 71 males; mean age = 9.2 weeks) in a novel test battery based on previous tasks developed and employed with adolescent and adult dogs. Our sample consisted of Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and Labrador × golden retriever...

** Full-text view-only SharedIt link: https://rdcu.be/b9o1a ** While our understanding of adult dog cognition has grown considerably over the past 20 years, relatively little is known about the ontogeny of dog cognition. To assess the development and longitudinal stability of cognitive traits in dogs, we administered a battery of tasks to 160 cand...

Dogs exhibit similarities to humans in their sensitivity to cooperative-communicative cues, but the extent to which they are biologically prepared for communication with humans is heavily debated. To investigate the developmental and genetic origins of these traits, we tested 375 eight-week-old dog puppies on a battery of social-cognitive measures....

Cognitive test batteries suggest that adult dogs have different types of cognitive abilities that vary independently. In the current study, we tested puppies repeatedly over a crucial period of development to explore the timing and rate at which these different cognitive skills develop. Service dog puppies (n = 113), raised using two different soci...

Companion dogs are a valuable model for aging research, including studies of cognitive decline and dementia. With advanced age, some dogs spontaneously develop cognitive impairments and neuropathology resembling features of Alzheimer’s disease. These processes have been studied extensively in laboratory beagles, but the cognitive assays used in tha...

A strong signature of selection in the domestic dog genome is found in a five-megabase region of chromosome six in which four structural variants derived from transposons have previously been associated with human-oriented social behavior, such as attentional bias to social stimuli and social interest in strangers. To explore these genetic associat...

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,...

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,...

Williams-Beuren Syndrome (WBS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder in humans caused by a hemizygous deletion of 28–30 genes and characterized by hypersociability and cognitive deficits. In canines, the homologous chromosomal region shows a strong signature of selection in domestic dogs relative to gray wolves, and four structural variants derived from...

Here, we address Hansen Wheat et al.’s commentary in this journal in response to Salomons et al. Current Biology, 31(14), 3137–3144.E11, (2021). We conduct additional analyses in response to Hansen Wheat et al.’s two main questions. First, we examine the claim that it was the move to a human home environment which enabled the dog puppies to outperf...

Canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD) is a form of dementia that shares many similarities with Alzheimer's disease. Given that physical activity is believed to reduce risk of Alzheimer's disease in humans, we explored the association between physical activity and cognitive health in a cohort of companion dogs, aged 6-18 years. We hypothesized that hig...

Although dogs have a special place in human history as the first domesticated species and play important roles in many cultures around the world, their role in scientific studies has been relatively recent. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Darwin, Pavlov, Scott & Fuller), domestic dogs were not commonly the subject of rigorous scientific invest...

Canine Cognitive Dysfunction (CCD) is a form of dementia that shares many similarities with Alzheimer’s disease. Given that physical activity is believed to reduce risk of Alzheimer’s disease in humans, we explored the association between physical activity and cognitive health in a cohort of companion dogs, aged 6-18 years. We hypothesized that hig...

A variety of diets have been studied for possible anti-aging effects. In particular, studies of intermittent fasting and time-restricted feeding in laboratory rodents have found evidence of beneficial health outcomes. Companion dogs represent a unique opportunity to study diet in a large mammal that shares human environments. The Dog Aging Project...

Hypotheses regarding the evolution of uniquely human social cognition often emphasize not only mental state representation, but also mental state sharing. Mental state sharing is evident in instances of joint intentionality – mutual understanding between individuals of each other's simultaneous and interdependent commitment to a shared activity or...

A variety of diets have been studied for possible anti-aging effects. In particular, studies of isocaloric time-restricted feeding in laboratory rodents have found evidence of beneficial health outcomes. Companion dogs represent a unique opportunity to study diet in a large mammal that shares human environments. The Dog Aging Project has been colle...

Dogs are trained for a variety of working roles including assistance, protection, and detection work. Many canine working roles, in their modern iterations, were developed at the turn of the 20th century and training practices have since largely been passed down from trainer to trainer. In parallel, research in psychology has advanced our understan...

To promote collaboration across canine science, address reproducibility 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...

Although we know that dogs evolved from wolves, it remains unclear how domestication affected dog cognition. One hypothesis suggests dog domestication altered social maturation by a process of selecting for an attraction to humans.1, 2, 3 Under this account, dogs became more flexible in using inherited skills to cooperatively communicate with a new...

Human cognition is believed to be unique in part because of early-emerging social skills for cooperative communication.¹ Comparative studies show that at 2.5 years old, children reason about the physical world similarly to other great apes, yet already possess cognitive skills for cooperative communication far exceeding those in our closest primate...

Dogs perform a variety of integral roles in our society, engaging in work ranging from assistance (e.g., service dogs, guide dogs) and therapy to detection (e.g., search-and-rescue dogs, explosive detection dogs) and protection (e.g., military and law enforcement dogs). However, success in these roles, which requires dogs to meet challenging behavi...

While we know that dogs evolved from wolves through a process of domestication, it remains unclear how this process may have affected dog cognitive development. Here we tested dog (N=44) and wolf (N=37) puppies, 5-18 weeks old, on a battery of temperament and cognition tasks. Dog puppies were more attracted to humans, read human gestures more skill...

Assistance dogs can greatly improve the lives of people with disabilities. However, a large proportion of dogs bred and trained for this purpose are deemed unable to successfully fulfill the behavioral demands of this role. Often, this determination is not finalized until weeks or even months into training, when the dog is close to 2 years old. Thu...

It is often assumed that measures of temperament within individuals are more correlated to one another than to measures of problem solving. However, the exact relationship between temperament and problem-solving tasks remains unclear because large-scale studies have typically focused on each independently. To explore this relationship, we tested 11...

In both humans and non-humans, differences in maternal style during the first few weeks of life can be reliably characterized, and these differences affect offspring's temperament and cognition in later life. Drawing on the breeding population of dogs at The Seeing Eye, a guide dog school in Morristown, New Jersey, we conducted videotaped focal fol...

How does maternal style, experienced over the first few weeks of life, affect later outcomes? Equally important, what is the role of an adolescent’s temperament and cognitive skills? The quest to understand which factors early in development lead to positive life outcomes is an endeavor that transcends species boundaries. In this dissertation, I ex...

The emotional-reactivity hypothesis proposes that problem-solving abilities can be constrained by temperament, within and across species. One way to test this hypothesis is with the predictions of the Yerkes-Dodson law. The law posits that arousal level, a component of temperament, affects problem solving in an inverted U-shaped relationship: Optim...

Significance Although scientists have identified surprising cognitive flexibility in animals and potentially unique features of human psychology, we know less about the selective forces that favor cognitive evolution, or the proximate biological mechanisms underlying this process. We tested 36 species in two problem-solving tasks measuring self-con...