Papers by Fabricio Carballo
Revista Argentina de Ciencias del Comportamiento ( RACC ), 2016
ecología del comportamiento. EL ESTADO DE ALIMENTACIÓN DE RENACUAJOS MODULA LA ADQUISICIÓN DE UN ... more ecología del comportamiento. EL ESTADO DE ALIMENTACIÓN DE RENACUAJOS MODULA LA ADQUISICIÓN DE UN APRENDIZAJE.
Revista Argentina de Ciencias del Comportamiento ( RACC ), 2016
ecología del comportamiento. EL ESTADO DE ALIMENTACIÓN DE RENACUAJOS MODULA LA ADQUISICIÓN DE UN ... more ecología del comportamiento. EL ESTADO DE ALIMENTACIÓN DE RENACUAJOS MODULA LA ADQUISICIÓN DE UN APRENDIZAJE.
Las Intervenciones Asistidas por Animales (IAA) se diferencian en Actividades, Terapia o Educacio... more Las Intervenciones Asistidas por Animales (IAA) se diferencian en Actividades, Terapia o Educacion Asistida por Animales. Constituyen un campo en desarrollo que esta recibiendo una atencion creciente del publico en general, profesionales de la salud y la comunidad cientifica. Implican la interaccion de animales y personas de diversas edades y caracteristicas. El objetivo de este trabajo es llevar a cabo un analisis conceptual del area a partir de revisiones y metaanalisis publicados sobre el tema. Se incluira su efectividad y una recopilacion de ciertas limitaciones metodologicas de los estudios, junto con propuestas para futuros rumbos de investigacion. Asimismo, se tendran en cuenta las caracteristicas de los animales participantes, asi como su bienestar durante estas tareas. Se concluye que, aunque las investigaciones en el area son aun incipientes y presentan debilidades metodologicas, los resultados son alentadores. Las IAA son un campo prometedor que requiere mas investigacion.
In the last few years, several studies have assessed dogs’ behavior when confronted with solvable... more In the last few years, several studies have assessed dogs’ behavior when confronted with solvable or unsolvable tasks in the presence of human partners. In these situations, dogs tend to gaze towards people, which has been regarded as a help requesting behavior. This ability to attract the attention of a partner towards a target object is consistent with referential signaling and would have a similar function than pointing in human infants. The aim of this work is to review dogs’ communicative behaviors during unsolvable or solvable but difficult tasks, particularly gazing at the human face. To be included in this review, a study had to feature a problem solving task and analyze gazing behavior towards people in the experimental situation. The relevant topics of discussion were grouped into three conceptual areas. The first one focuses on methodological aspects such as the procedures and apparatuses used, the people present during the test, and the behaviors analyzed. The second one...
International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2016
Social species need conflict-resolution mechanisms to maintain group cohesion and diminish aggres... more Social species need conflict-resolution mechanisms to maintain group cohesion and diminish aggression. Reconciliation (affiliative contact between opponents) and consolation (affiliative contact between the victim and an uninvolved third party) have been postulated for this function in various species. The purpose of this work is to study post-conflict affiliative behaviors toward humans in domestic dogs. This study has looked into post-conflict affiliative behaviors in domestic dogs toward their owners. To this end, a conflict situation was created where the animal was scolded by one of the owners for “stealing” human food. Behaviors were recorded along a period of 3 min and 30 s before and after the scolding. Results show that dogs exhibit affiliative behaviors (significant increase in closeness, gazing, and tail wagging) as well as appeasement behaviors (averting eyes, low tail carriage, lowered ears, lip licking, and crouching) toward the owner that scolded them (reconciliation)...
Learning & Behavior, 2020
When confronted with a difficult or impossible problem, dogs tend to look back at humans and try ... more When confronted with a difficult or impossible problem, dogs tend to look back at humans and try to catch their attention, instead of trying to solve it themselves. This behavior has been interpreted as a help request, but it is debated whether dogs take into account prior experiences with people when selecting whom to turn to. In the present study, dogs were trained to discriminate between a generous experimenter who gave them food and a selfish one that took it away. After assessing that they had established a preference for the generous one, we exposed them to an unsolvable task in which food was locked inside a container, while the experimenters stood on each side of the apparatus. During this task, we measured their behaviors towards each experimenter. Results showed that dogs did not first turn to the generous experimenter. However, they gazed more at the generous experimenter during the task, which implies that they did, to some degree, selectively ask for help based on previous interactions. Moreover, they gazed more and spent significantly more time in contact with the female experimenter when she was generous, suggesting a possible synergic effect of the experimenters' ID (male/female) and their attitude (generous/selfish). All in all, these results suggest that, to some extent, dogs are able to use the information from previous interactions with unknown humans to selectively ask for help.
Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 2019
Dogs participating in Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI) are prime candidates to assess how incr... more Dogs participating in Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI) are prime candidates to assess how increased interaction with people modulates canine behavior. The aim of this work was to compare the behavior of AAI and pet dogs on three tasks following the same pattern: a) an acquisition phase in which dogs were reinforced for emitting a specific response and b) an extinction phase in which it was no longer reinforced. We evaluated dogs (13 participating in AAI and 13 living as pets) on learning two sociocognitive tasks (gazing and object choice) and a non-social one (problem solving). As clients do not always respond properly to their communicative interactions, AAI dogs often need to persevere in their communicative responses during their typical activities. Therefore, we hypothesized that AAI dogs would be more persistent than pet dogs, particularly during the extinction phases of the tests. Although no significant main effects of group were observed during the extinction phase of the gazing test, only pet dogs significantly decreased the time spent gazing at the experimenter during this phase, which indicates they gazed less as trials went on. In the object choice task, no differences between these groups were observed. Finally, in the problem solving task, AAI dogs persisted significantly more in picking up bones even when the apparatus was empty and also spent more time interacting with it during extinction trials than pet dogs. Besides preexisting behavioral characteristics, the combination of the higher exposure to people and not always being immediately reinforced during their work may affect AAI dogs' persistence on some cognitive tasks. However, factors such as training levels and interaction with the experimenter during the task modulate this response. A deeper understanding about AAI dogs will shed light over the effects of increased social experience on dogs' cognition and is particularly relevant given the popularity of AAIs in the recent years.
PloS one, 2017
There is some dispute regarding the role of experience in the development of dogs´ socio-cognitiv... more There is some dispute regarding the role of experience in the development of dogs´ socio-cognitive abilities in their interaction with people. We sought to provide new evidence to this debate by comparing dogs with contrasting levels of experience with humans, in a task involving the discrimination of human generous and selfish attitudes. To this end, we compared the performance of adult family dogs against that of adult shelter dogs and puppies living in people´s homes. In training trials, the generous experimenter (G) signaled the bowl with food and allowed the dog to eat, whereas the selfish experimenter (S) also signaled the baited bowl, but she/he ate the food before the dog could have access to it. Then, subjects were allowed to freely choose between G and S in the choice test. The main finding was that adult subjects (both family and shelter dogs) developed a preference for G over S, but puppies did not. We conclude that the quality and/or quantity of everyday-contact with pe...
Revista Colombiana de Psicología, 2015
El análisis comparado de la cooperación contribuye al entendimiento tanto de sus orígenes evoluti... more El análisis comparado de la cooperación contribuye al entendimiento tanto de sus orígenes evolutivos como de los mecanismos próximos involucrados en dicho fenómeno. Esta revisión se centra en estudios sobre cooperación en perros domésticos. Para ello se definieron conceptos relacionados con la cooperación, se describieron las razones filogenéticas y ontogenéticas que hacen del perro un buen modelo para el estudio de este fenómeno y se hizo una revisión crítica de los trabajos realizados en este campo. Fueron incluidas investigaciones sobre situaciones cooperativas y sobre las habilidades cognitivas involucradas. Se discuten hipótesis sobre los mecanismos próximos de esta habilidad que incluyen elementos emocionales, motivacionales y de aprendizaje asociativo.
Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 2015
ABSTRACT
Versión argentina de la escala Monash para la evaluación de la relación de los dueños con sus per... more Versión argentina de la escala Monash para la evaluación de la relación de los dueños con sus perros (MDORS-AR) y análisis de los factores demográficos asociados a sus resultados Argentine version of the Monash scale for the evaluation of the owners' relationship with their dogs (MDORS-AR) and analysis of the demographic factors associated with its results
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Papers by Fabricio Carballo