Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere

Guide Dogs for the Blind

Over the last 20 years, a large amount of research has been conducted in an attempt to uncover the cognitive abilities of the domestic dog. While substantial advancements have been made, progress has been impeded by the fact that little is known about how dogs visually perceive their external environment. It is imperative that future research deter...

Domestic dogs play many vital roles in human lives; however, relatively little is known about how they perceive the world visually. Given dogs’ recent popularity as a subject in cognitive and behavioural studies, it is important to understand how they visually interpret the world around them. One way to evaluate perception is to assess illusion sus...

A well-known phenomenon to cat owners is the tendency of their cats to sit in enclosed spaces such as boxes, laundry baskets, and even shape outlines taped on the floor. This investigative study asks whether domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) are also susceptible to sitting in enclosures that are illusory in nature, utilizing cats’ attraction t...

Ostensive communication, communication motivated not only by an informative intention, but also by an intention to make this informative intention overt, is thought to be restricted to human signalers and to rely on metacognitive skills. On the receiver side, human infants and dogs have been found to selectively respond to human ostensive communica...

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...

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,...

Within human-animal dyadic interactions, dog-human gaze has been identified as the crux of several important visual behaviors, such as looking back, gaze-following, and participation in an oxytocin feedback loop. It has been posited that this gaze behavior may have been motivated and sustained by cooperative relationships between dogs (Canis lupus...

This study sought to enhance current dog training practices by determining whether a finding from human motor skill learning research, the contextual interference (CI) effect, could be replicated in a trick-training paradigm with companion dogs. In humans, research shows that practicing skills in random order, as compared with blocked order, improv...

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,...

Illusions—visual fields that distort perception—can inform the understanding of visual perception and its evolution. An example of one such illusion, the Rotating Snakes illusion, causes the perception of motion in a series of static concentric circles. The current study investigated pet dogs’ and cats’ perception of the Rotating Snakes illusion in...

Animal shelters have been found to represent stressful environments for pet dogs, both affecting behavior and influencing welfare. The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light new uncertainties in animal sheltering practices which may affect shelter dog behavior in unexpected ways. To evaluate this, we analyzed changes in dog activity levels...

The assignments presented in this article bring together the perspectives of four animal behavior instructors, each of whom designed and implemented a meme assignment within their virtual classrooms in 2020. The instructors used Twitter as a means to engage with one another and obtain tips and suggestions for their respective meme assignment instru...

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...

Visual illusions represent an innovative method to investigate animal visual perception. One well known geometric illusion is the Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion, which consists of two identically sized target circles with one surrounded by large inducer circles and the other surrounded by small inducer circles. Humans are susceptible to this illusio...

https://twitter.com/Explanimals/status/1354466789959360516?s=20

This article presents a semester-long, low-stakes, scaffolded assignment I developed for a master’s-level course titled Companion Animals in Society at CUNY Hunter College (Fall 2019). The ultimate goal of the assignment was to provide students with a comprehensive guide to developing skills and understanding in science communication, as well as fu...

A common barrier to entry for New York City (NYC) dog adopters trying to rent apartments is the breed label the animal shelter assigned to their dog, despite the fact the labelling is primarily based on intuition and appearance. Bideawee, a limited admission shelter with three locations in the greater New York area, including one in NYC, phased out...

The Ponzo illusion is a geometric visual illusion commonly presented as two horizontal parallel lines, equal in length, above one another, surrounded by a set of converging lines. These converging lines represent an intersecting feature in the display that distort the perception of the equally sized parallel lines such that the upper line (closest...

Companion dogs housed in animal shelters are subject to a great number of uncontrollable and unalterable stressors. To combat these stressors and the associated immunosuppression that can result in high rates of contagious disease in sheltered dogs, a large open admission municipal animal shelter in New York City introduced trazodone hydrochloride,...

One way to better understand how animals visually perceive their environment is to assess the way in which visual information is interpreted and adapted based on preconceptions. Domestic dogs represent a unique species in which to evaluate visual perception as recent findings suggest they may differ from humans and other animal species in terms of...

In the target article titled “Behavioral and Cognitive Factors That Affect the Success of Scent Detection Dogs,” Troisi and colleagues highlight several challenges associated with scent detection dog preparation and deployment. Traditionally, scent detection dogs have been bred, raised, and trained at designated training facilities. More recently,...

Due to the composition of the cone photoreceptors in the retina of dogs, it has been proposed they might demonstrate human-like red/green colour blindness. However, some assessments have shown that dogs may still be able to distinguish between red and green. This suggests that dogs may be differentiating between the two colours on the basis of thei...

Objectives To describe preliminary use of a forced‐choice preferential looking task for the clinical assessment of vision in dogs. Materials and Methods The vision of 18 pet dogs was investigated in two separate studies using a forced‐choice preferential looking task: multiple observers watched eye, head and body movements on video recordings to i...

One way to uncover visual capabilities in animals is to assess perception of geometric illusions. Recently, we found that dogs did not demonstrate susceptibility to the Ponzo illusion when it was presented in a variety of contexts, a unique result as all other published reports of nonhuman animal species tested on the illusion have demonstrated hum...

Play bows represent a common, highly stereotyped behaviour across the genus Canis. However, much of what we know is limited to the wolf and its domestic derivative, the domestic dog. Here we continue to look at the function of play bows among subspecies/variants of Canis lupus by including the dingo. Comparing dingoes to wolves and dogs may provide...

While domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) play a large role in human daily lives, little is known about how they perceive the visual world. Recent research suggests that dogs may perceive certain visual illusions differently than humans. To further evaluate geometric illusion susceptibility, eight dogs were assessed on their susceptibility to the Ponz...

One central issue in the study of animal cognition concerns conceptual behaviour, where an organism categorises objects, events, and relationships so as to transfer previously learned rules to novel contexts. In this study, we investigated whether or not dogs demonstrate conceptual behaviour in the form of simple relational class concept learning....

Susceptibility to geometrical visual illusions has been tested in a number of non-human animal species, providing important information about how these species perceive their environment. Considering their active role in human lives, visual illusion susceptibility was tested in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Using a two-choice simultaneous discr...

Animals utilize behavioral signals across a range of different contexts in order to communicate with others and produce probable behavioral outcomes. During play animals frequently adopt action patterns used in other contexts. Researchers have therefore hypothesized that play signals have evolved to clarify communicative intent. One highly stereoty...

Determinants of Visual Signals. The bower and the partner were considered to be within each other’s field when the majority of the front torso was facing towards the play partner. Players were considered to be not facing one another when more than half of each individual’s front torso was facing away from the other. (PDF)

Ethogram, behavioral codes, and definitions. (PDF)

GLMM analysis output for both dog and wolf puppies. (PDF)

A poster with preliminary results from our paper ”Investigating the function of play bows in adult pet dogs (Canis lupus familiars)”

Presentation on preliminary evidence of play bows for out paper ”Investigating the function of play bows in adult pet dogs (Canis lupus familiars)”