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© 2003 - 2019
Dog Education Institute
De Roedel
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Dog Cognition
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/
http://de-roedel.skynetblogs.be/category/1410333/1/Dog+Cognition
The Dog Cognition research is based upon a
number of aspects that play an important part
within The Roedel Method. For many years, we of
De Roedel have been performing our own research,
mainly in an empirical way. This means; a lot of
observation, comparing research, field studies
and literature studies.
Topics for the Dog Cognition research are for
instance;
The relationship between
scent and body language,
How this expresses itself
in cognitive behaviour,
What way do stimuli
from the environment influence this behaviour.
Dog Education Institute De Roedel started the
Dog Cognition research in 2003, together with
the department of Artificial Intelligence of the
Free University in Amsterdam and Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker, who, at the
time, was working for the department of
Cognitive Artificial Intelligence of the Radboud
Universiteit Nijmegen.
We wanted to review our empirical findings by
objective research. Objective research also makes it possible to compare the
results of this research with results of other
scientific research that is done all over the
world. And thanks to this scientific research,
we can learn more about this dog language and
how it is expressed.
Preparations
Before we could start, a whole lot of
preparatory work needed to be done. Thankfully,
three students of the Amsterdam University were
prepared to help us. We needed to compose a
reliable protocol in which all research subjects
would be covered in a verifiable way.
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/protocol/protocol.pdf
 
Making a ‘dictionary’, the ethogram, in which every detail is described
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/ethogram/ethogram.pdf
All aspects of the ethogram had to be manageable in a program in ‘formal language’, so that not people (subjective) but computers could process all the data and provide results (objective).
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/research/software_location.html
Thus statistically supported research makes it possible to gain more clarity on the topics.
Learning more about the dog language and how this is expressed, is useful information for everyone who works with dogs in any way!
Practical
Only after these preparations we could finally go to work practically, armed with all the equipment needed for execution of the protocol; two cameras to film everything, plenty of tapes, a storyboard, measuring tapes and the list goes on…
We found two dog-schools and a dog-walking service that were prepared to cooperate with our research. They managed to stimulate many of their students to go through with each part of the test, no matter how tough the circumstances! Our thanks to all these test-persons for their great commitment and to;
Bernice
www.hondenschoolvlietstede.nl
Dog-training centre KC Pampus
www.kcpampus.nl
Dog-walking service Kyno Logica in Amsterdam
In total, with 2 cameras, the students made over 100 recordings of the test-persons and their dog from two different angles. After that, these recordings had to be processed, transcripts needed to be made,
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/transcripts/
by means of the ethogram and the software.
With their great work, both Tibor Bosee and Ildiko Frank (Free
University Amsterdam) were of great aid in this research. Ildiko worked very hard, and on July 30th 2004 she finished off her work and held a presentation about her thesis. With a 7 as her final grade, she could go back home, to Hungary. Well done, Ildiko!! We wish you all the best in Hungary!
Results
The first part of the research was finished
off and resulted in an article; “Paw
Preference Correlates to Task Performance in
Dogs”
You can read the article here:
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/Publicity/alphen.pdf
From this research, it became clear that for a
dog, the use of the left or right front paw is a
part of the dog language. This is completely in
line with The Roedel Method. Whether a dog steps
away with either left or right is related to
motivation. Of course, this will also be
subjected to further research. However, it is
clear that the sausage used in many of the tasks
was not enough motivation for many of the dogs to
carry the task out correctly!
The article ‘Paw Preference” was sent in for the
Cognitive Science Conference, which took place
in July 2005 in Italy.
http://www.psych.unito.it/csc/cogsci05/
The article was accepted as a poster and Catholijn Jonker was present in Italy for the presentation and the design of the
poster.
On June 18th 2005 an article with the title; ‘Rechtspoters zijn dwarsliggers’ (‘The Right-Pawed are opposite’) appeared in the Telegraph. A remarkable study on dogs’ motivation
Attention was given to the research in a number
of other magazines;
If a dog respects it’s owner,
it will give its best paw”
Linkspoters en dwarsliggers. “Left-footers and opposite”, If a dog respects it’s owner, it will give its best paw”
(Vox, magazine of the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
“Research; Dog behaviour
Obedient dogs give you their best paw. However,
if a dog starts walking with its right paw, the
owner can forget it, as research shows.”
ZIN, a monthly magazine for 50 plussers
In the quarterly magazine Lost Vast of O & O
(http://www.hondenopvoeding.nl),
an article by Leo Leunissen appeared in August
2005;
Dutch research about body language and
motivation;
The Right-footed are “opposite”.
Further research
As with any scientific research, the results of
‘Paw Preference’ brings on quite a number of
questions for further research:
- Why does the performance decrease in the three
trials, particularly in the third trial?
- If the sausage is not motivating enough for
the dog, then what is?
- Where does the obvious difference between the
performance of young, untrained dogs and older,
trained dogs come from?
- Why did we not see any difference between
sexes and paw preference, while this has come
forth from other research?
- Is the relationship between the owner and the
dog of influence? How and in what way?
Thanks to two Van Hall trainees, Manou (2006) en
Wieke (2007-2008) a lot of important and
time-consuming work has been done.
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/participants/
We still have transcripts that have to be
described in ‘formal language’. Making ‘long
transcripts’ is a huge task, as you can see here
http://www.mmi.tudelft.nl/dog-cognition/transcripts/dog006W.xml
All recordings, per dog and from both camera’s,
need to be described here (frame by frame!), but
slowly but surely, there is progress. If all
goes well, we hope to be able to finish off
another part of research and publish a new
article in 2009.
UPDATE AUGUST 2009
In april we sent in an article for this
conference.
224 articles were sent in, but only a very few
were accepted as ‘excellent paper’. Our article
was judged as a ‘good quality paper’, not bad at
all!
(image by image!), but slowly but surely, there
is progress. If all goes well, we hope to be
able to round off another piece of research and
publish a new article in 2009.
Tibor was the right person to present our Dog
Cognition article, since he would be presenting
his own (a different one) article (congrats
Tibor!) at the International Conference in
Vancouver as well. The name of our article is “Improving
Interobserver Reliability by Artificial
Intelligence Techniques in Behavioural Research”,
by Arjen van Alphen, Tibor Bosse, Catholijn M.
Jonker, Francien Koeman.
Subjectivity is in behavioural research a huge
and familiar obstacle.
In the research methods we use at Dog Cognition
the human subjectivity is severely reduced,
because it are not people who are scoring the
results, but a computer. Therefore is it also
possible to use the data all over again without
having to watch the tapes in detail for another
time.
Downside: entering all the exact data into the
computer program for the program to analyse is
an awful lot of work.
At het end of August Tibor left for Vancouver
for the presentation of the article.
Please contact us if you would like to read the
original article, we are happy to send the
article directly to you.
Meanwhile we are working on a next article…
More information about Catholijn Jonker;
http://mmi.tudelft.nl/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&id=112
http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/nl/oi/nod/onderzoeker/PRS1249598/
More information about Tibor Bosse;
www.cs.vu.nl/~tbosse
References
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