F. Range - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by F. Range

Research paper thumbnail of Dogs (Canis familiaris) can learn to attend to connectivity in string pulling tasks

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of The Influence of the Relationship and Motivation on Inequity Aversion in Dogs

Social Justice Research, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of The evolution of self-control

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Discrimination of familiar human faces in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Learning and Motivation, 2013

Faces are an important visual category for many taxa, and the human face is no exception to this.... more Faces are an important visual category for many taxa, and the human face is no exception to this. Because faces differ in subtle ways and possess many idiosyncratic features, they provide a rich source of perceptual cues. A fair amount of those cues are learned through social interactions and are used for future identification of individual humans. These effects of individual experience can be studied particularly well in hetero-specific face perception. Domestic dogs represent a perfect model in this respect, due to their proved ability to extract important information from the human face in socio-communicative interactions. There is also suggestive evidence that dogs can identify their owner or other familiar human individuals by using visual information from the face. However, most studies have used only dogs' looking behavior to examine their visual processing of human faces and it has been demonstrated only that dogs can differentiate between familiar and unknown human faces. Here, we examined the dog's ability to discriminate the faces of two familiar persons by active choice (approach and touch). Furthermore, in successive stages of the experiment we investigated how well dogs discriminate humans in different representations by systematically reducing the informational richness and the quality of the stimuli. We found a huge inter-individual and inter-stage variance in performance, indicating differences across dogs in their learning ability as well as their selection of discriminative cues. On a group level, the performance of dogs significantly decreased when they were presented with pictures of human heads after having learned to discriminate the real heads, and when - after relearning - confronted with the same pictures showing only the inner parts of the heads. However, as two dogs quickly mastered all stages, we conclude that dogs are in principle able to discriminate people on the basis of visual information from their faces and by making active choices.

Research paper thumbnail of Discrimination of familiar human faces in domestic dogs

Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Working dogs personalities: Individual differences in learning performance

Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of The bone is mine!—context-specific vocalization in dogs

Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of The Use of a Displacement Device Negatively Affects the Performance of Dogs (Canis familiaris) in Visible Object Displacement Tasks

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2014

Visible and invisible displacement tasks have been used widely for comparative studies of animals... more Visible and invisible displacement tasks have been used widely for comparative studies of animals' understanding of object permanence, with evidence accumulating that some species can solve invisible displacement tasks and, thus, reach Piagetian stage 6 of object permanence. In contrast, dogs appear to rely on associative cues, such as the location of the displacement device, during invisible displacement tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether dogs, and other species that failed in invisible displacement tasks, do so because of their inability to form a mental representation of the target object, or simply because of the involvement of a more salient but potentially misleading associative cue, the displacement device. Here we show that the use of a displacement device impairs the performance of dogs also in visible displacement tasks: their search accuracy was significantly lower when a visible displacement was performed with a displacement device, and only two of initially 42 dogs passed the sham-baiting control conditions. The negative influence of the displacement device in visible displacement tasks may be explained by strong associative cues overriding explicit information about the target object's location, reminiscent of an overshadowing effect, and/or object individuation errors as the target object is placed within the displacement device and moves along a spatiotemporally identical trajectory. Our data suggest that a comprehensive appraisal of a species' performance in object permanence tasks should include visible displacement tasks with the same displacement device used in invisible displacements, which typically has not been done in the past.

Research paper thumbnail of When, what, and whom to watch? Quantifying attention in ravens (Corvus corax) and jackdaws (Corvus monedula)

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Finding a needle in a haystack: new methods of locating and working with Rhinoceros vipers (Bitis rhinoceros)

Herpetological …, 2008

Large snake species are important predators in their ecosystems (Dodd 1987; Greene 1997; Lawson a... more Large snake species are important predators in their ecosystems (Dodd 1987; Greene 1997; Lawson and Klemens 2001). Rhinoceros Vipers (Viperidae: Bitis rhinoceros, Schlegel, 1855) are among the biggest and most massive venomous snakes (Phelps 1981). ...

Research paper thumbnail of Reversal learning in a social communication task: is there an effect of cue

Journal of Veterinary Behavior-clinical Applications and Research, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of Dogs (Canis familiaris) can learn to attend to connectivity in string pulling tasks

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of The Influence of the Relationship and Motivation on Inequity Aversion in Dogs

Social Justice Research, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of The evolution of self-control

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Discrimination of familiar human faces in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Learning and Motivation, 2013

Faces are an important visual category for many taxa, and the human face is no exception to this.... more Faces are an important visual category for many taxa, and the human face is no exception to this. Because faces differ in subtle ways and possess many idiosyncratic features, they provide a rich source of perceptual cues. A fair amount of those cues are learned through social interactions and are used for future identification of individual humans. These effects of individual experience can be studied particularly well in hetero-specific face perception. Domestic dogs represent a perfect model in this respect, due to their proved ability to extract important information from the human face in socio-communicative interactions. There is also suggestive evidence that dogs can identify their owner or other familiar human individuals by using visual information from the face. However, most studies have used only dogs' looking behavior to examine their visual processing of human faces and it has been demonstrated only that dogs can differentiate between familiar and unknown human faces. Here, we examined the dog's ability to discriminate the faces of two familiar persons by active choice (approach and touch). Furthermore, in successive stages of the experiment we investigated how well dogs discriminate humans in different representations by systematically reducing the informational richness and the quality of the stimuli. We found a huge inter-individual and inter-stage variance in performance, indicating differences across dogs in their learning ability as well as their selection of discriminative cues. On a group level, the performance of dogs significantly decreased when they were presented with pictures of human heads after having learned to discriminate the real heads, and when - after relearning - confronted with the same pictures showing only the inner parts of the heads. However, as two dogs quickly mastered all stages, we conclude that dogs are in principle able to discriminate people on the basis of visual information from their faces and by making active choices.

Research paper thumbnail of Discrimination of familiar human faces in domestic dogs

Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Working dogs personalities: Individual differences in learning performance

Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of The bone is mine!—context-specific vocalization in dogs

Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of The Use of a Displacement Device Negatively Affects the Performance of Dogs (Canis familiaris) in Visible Object Displacement Tasks

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2014

Visible and invisible displacement tasks have been used widely for comparative studies of animals... more Visible and invisible displacement tasks have been used widely for comparative studies of animals' understanding of object permanence, with evidence accumulating that some species can solve invisible displacement tasks and, thus, reach Piagetian stage 6 of object permanence. In contrast, dogs appear to rely on associative cues, such as the location of the displacement device, during invisible displacement tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether dogs, and other species that failed in invisible displacement tasks, do so because of their inability to form a mental representation of the target object, or simply because of the involvement of a more salient but potentially misleading associative cue, the displacement device. Here we show that the use of a displacement device impairs the performance of dogs also in visible displacement tasks: their search accuracy was significantly lower when a visible displacement was performed with a displacement device, and only two of initially 42 dogs passed the sham-baiting control conditions. The negative influence of the displacement device in visible displacement tasks may be explained by strong associative cues overriding explicit information about the target object's location, reminiscent of an overshadowing effect, and/or object individuation errors as the target object is placed within the displacement device and moves along a spatiotemporally identical trajectory. Our data suggest that a comprehensive appraisal of a species' performance in object permanence tasks should include visible displacement tasks with the same displacement device used in invisible displacements, which typically has not been done in the past.

Research paper thumbnail of When, what, and whom to watch? Quantifying attention in ravens (Corvus corax) and jackdaws (Corvus monedula)

Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Finding a needle in a haystack: new methods of locating and working with Rhinoceros vipers (Bitis rhinoceros)

Herpetological …, 2008

Large snake species are important predators in their ecosystems (Dodd 1987; Greene 1997; Lawson a... more Large snake species are important predators in their ecosystems (Dodd 1987; Greene 1997; Lawson and Klemens 2001). Rhinoceros Vipers (Viperidae: Bitis rhinoceros, Schlegel, 1855) are among the biggest and most massive venomous snakes (Phelps 1981). ...

Research paper thumbnail of Reversal learning in a social communication task: is there an effect of cue

Journal of Veterinary Behavior-clinical Applications and Research, 2011