Abstract
Cognitive biases, often used as indices of affective and emotional states, are associated with individual differences in personality in humans and have been observed in nonhuman animals, including dogs. Although dogs have complementary advantages over traditional animal models of human cognition, little is known about the relationship between dogs’ cognitive bias and personality. Here, we examined in 29 family dogs (representing 14 breeds and 12 mutts; Mage = 4.59 years, SD = 2.90), the association between naturally occurring – as opposed to experimentally induced – cognitive bias, indexed via active choice behavior in a Go/No-Go (GNG) paradigm reflecting positive/negative expectations about ambiguous stimuli, and owner-rated personality. In a subsample we additionally assessed whether prior inhibition, personality, and inattention (IA)/hyperactivity/impulsivity (H/I) results could be replicated in a modified paradigm. We also explored whether expanding the response time-window would increase GNG errors and whether dogs exhibited differences in their behavioral approach to uncertainty. Findings indicated dogs with higher conscientiousness and extraversion scores were more likely to exhibit a “go” response to ambiguous stimuli. Replicability across prior and current results was generally established, e.g., as previously, IA did not predict GNG performance but extraversion did, whereas H/I predicted different indices of GNG performance. Increased response time-window did not result in differential performance, except for less commission errors. No differences in behavioral response strategy to trained “no-go” and to ambiguous stimuli were apparent. Results evince the dog is a promising animal model of the association between an optimistic cognitive bias and personality.
Highlights
ResultsGo response % to ambiguous stimuli was predicted by conscientiousness, F(1,29) = 5.98, p = 0.022 and extraversion, F(1,29) = 4.06, p = 0.054
The sample size of 29 dogs was chosen as this sized sample was sufficiently large in our earlier, highly relevant work, to observe meaningful effects using comparable and multi-method measurement methods[32] and to ensure both feasibility in addressing research questions of interest and minimization of participation burden for owners and dogs
There was no difference between the 3 s and the 5 s test in terms of omission error %, average latency of correct “go” responses, or, average latency of commission errors but there was a difference across tests in commission error %, in that dogs exhibited more errors during the 3 s (M = 20.60, 95% confidence interval (CI) [13.79; 27.93]) than during the 5 s (M = 11.49, 95% CIs [8.04; 14.49]) test, t(28) = −2.246, p = 0.033
Summary
Go response % to ambiguous stimuli was predicted by conscientiousness, F(1,29) = 5.98, p = 0.022 and extraversion, F(1,29) = 4.06, p = 0.054. Greater go response % to ambiguous stimuli was associated with greater conscientiousness, β = 2.45, p = 0.022 (SE = 1.00; 95% CIs [0.39; 4.50]) and with greater extraversion, β = 1.51, p = 0.054 (SE = 0.75; 95% CIs [−0.31; 3.05]). Go response latency was not predicted by any independent or covariate variables (ps > 0.305). Aim 2: Determine whether results on the association between task performance and ADHD-B/S can be replicated in a modified design. When considering which independent variables were associated with which dependent variables, the results obtained in[32] are largely consistent with the findings obtained in the current study
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