Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: psychology
Description
We compared sociability towards humans of domesticated and tame members of several Canidae: Belyaev's fox (Vulpes vulpes), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), gray wolf (Canis lupus), dingo (Canis l. dingo), New Guinea singing dog (Canis l. dingo), and dog (Canis l. familiaris). We defined sociability as motivation or willingness to engage with humans. Our operationalized definition of sociability is the latency to approach (LTA) the human experimenter and the amount of time the canid spent within one meter of the human experimenter (PTC). We added an unfamiliar and familiar experimenter condition to deduce whether or not canids discriminated on who they were more social with: an owner or a stranger. To each experimenter condition we added a passive and active phase to discern whether or not canids were more social when called or not. Across all conditions and phases dogs were significantly more social than all other canid types. We concluded genetic differences due to domestication and environmental differences due to socialization accounted for sociability differences seen in dogs compared to the other canid types.
ContributorsBeckstrom-Sternberg, David Tristan (Author) / Wynne, Clive (Thesis director) / McBeath, Michael (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
A handheld metal cricket noisemaker known as a "clicker" is often used in dog training to teach dogs new behaviors; however, evidence for the superior efficacy of clickers as opposed to providing solely primary reinforcement or other secondary reinforcers in the acquisition of novel behavior in dogs is almost entirely anecdotal. We sought to determine under what circumstances a clicker may result in acquisition of a novel behavior to a higher level when compared to other potential reinforcement methods. In Experiment 1, three groups of 30 dogs each were trained to emit a novel sit and stay behavior with either the delivery of food alone, a verbal marker with food, or a clicker and food. The group that received only a primary reinforcer reached a significantly higher criterion of training than the group trained with a verbal secondary reinforcer. Performance of the group experiencing a clicker secondary reinforcer was intermediate between the other two groups, but not significantly different from either. In Experiment 2, three different groups of 25 dogs each were shaped to emit a nose targeting behavior and then perform that behavior at increasing distances from the experimenter using the same three methods of positive reinforcement used in Experiment 1. No statistically significant differences between the groups were found. Overall, the findings suggest that both clickers and other forms of positive reinforcement can be used successfully in training a dog to perform a novel behavior.
ContributorsGilchrist, Rachel (Author) / Wynne, Clive (Thesis director) / Conrad, Cheryl (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Environmental ethics is often described on a continuum of anthropocentrism to biocentrism. Pet ownership has been shown to correlate with biocentrism. This study aims to answer how strong the correlation is between pet ownership and biocentrism and how pet owners react when pets' needs conflict with the environment. Findings from the study confirm previous research that pet owners lean biocentric, but their biocentric beliefs end when their pet's well-being misaligns with environmental concerns.
ContributorsCrawford-Paz Soldan, Esme (Author) / Wynne, Clive (Thesis director) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2024-05