Final coursework

For our final coursework I summarized article by Range,Horn, Viranyi, and Huber called The Absence of Reward Induces Inequity Aversion in Dogs. The aim of this paper was to investigate whether domestic dogs are influenced by the inequity of rewards that were received for the same action in pairs of familiar dogs when working with the same experimenter. The experimenter requested the dogs to perform a certain action (dogs were asked to give their paw) to gain a food reward.

Interestingly, the results in this paper differed from the results of the primate studies because researchers did not find any indication for sensitivity towards the quality of the food reward and effort involved. There might several possible explanations why dogs behaved that way. It might be because all tested dogs were well trained, used to work on a daily basis with their ownerOr in the social conditions, working next to a partner might have a facilitation effect (increasing the motivation of the subject to continue working even if only the partner is receiving the high-value reward and not they themselves)
And perhaps most importantly, the presence of the rewards themselves was such a strong motivator that they obscured the results of any QI assessment by the subjects.
Also in contrast to the primates the dogs never rejected food. Therefore, the dogs were only responsive to disadvantageous inequity aversion and were not willing to pay a cost by rejecting unfair offers. As we can see there is a fundamental difference in the behaviour between primates and dogs. However, attempting to answer questions such as whether lack of sensitivity to the quality of the reward is a specific feature of domestic dogs or canines in general, would require devising experiments in which the dogs may behave more like the primates that have been tested so far.
The other four articles contained experiments with monkeys,which colleagues from my group discussed in a final paper.
Over all i enjoyed this module and types of assignments we were required to do. Moreover, i enjoyed working as a group.It might be because i was lucky enough to be a part of the group where everybody equally contributed to our work.