Synchronous citizen science with dogs

Abstract

Citizen science approaches have grown in popularity over the years, partly due to their ability to reach a wider audience and produce more generalizable samples. In dogs, these studies, though, have been limited in their controls over materials or experimental protocols, with guardians typically reporting results without researcher supervision. Over two studies, we explored and validated a synchronous citizen science approach. We had dog guardians act as experimenters while being supervised by a researcher over Zoom. In study 1, we demonstrated that synchronous citizen science produced equivalent levels of performance to in-lab designs in a choice task. Consistent with past in-lab research, dogs selected a treat (vs. an empty plate) in a two-alternative forced-choice task. In study 2, we showed that Zoom methods are also appropriate for studies utilizing looking time measures. We explored dogs' looking behaviors when a bag of treats was placed in an unreachable location, and dogs' guardians were either attentive or inattentive while dogs attempted to retrieve the treats. Consistent with past work, dogs in the attentive condition looked at their guardian for longer periods and had a shorter latency to first look than dogs in the inattentive condition. Overall, we have demonstrated that synchronous citizen science studies with dogs are feasible and produce valid results consistent with those found in a typical lab setting.

Keywords: Canine Cognition; Citizen Science; Decision Making; Domestic Dog; Social Cognition.

Fig. 1

Experimental Setup for Study 1. Note Left - Example photo of the setup with a dog and guardian. Right - Schematic of the setup from a top-down perspective. Dog guardians placed the 3 markers (1 for the dog to stand on, one for each of the 2 plates to be placed on) in advance. The Zoom-enabled device was placed so that both the plates and the dogs’ faces were all visible.

Fig. 2

Experimental Setup for Study 2. Note Dogs first received warm-up trials (Left). Dogs then experienced either the Attentive (Middle) or Inattentive (Right) condition