Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 114, Issue 34, Pages 9128-9133Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704303114
Keywords
guide dogs; nursing style; maternal style; temperament; cognition
Categories
Funding
- University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychology's Norman Anderson Graduate Student Fund
- University of Pennsylvania University Research Fund award
- Class of Robert J. Holtz Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Research
- University of Pennsylvania's University Scholars program
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [DGE-1321851]
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A continuing debate in studies of social development in both humans and other animals is the extent to which early life experiences affect adult behavior. Also unclear are the relative contributions of cognitive skills (intelligence) and temperament for successful outcomes. Guide dogs are particularly suited to research on these questions. To succeed as a guide dog, individuals must accomplish complex navigation and decision making without succumbing to distractions and unforeseen obstacles. Faced with these rigorous demands, only similar to 70% of dogs that enter training ultimately achieve success. What predicts success as a guide dog? To address these questions, we followed 98 puppies from birth to adulthood. We found that high levels of overall maternal behavior were linked with a higher likelihood of program failure. Furthermore, mothers whose nursing style required greater effort by puppies were more likely to produce successful offspring, whereas mothers whose nursing style required less effort were more likely to produce offspring that failed. In young adults, an inability to solve a multistep task quickly, compounded with high levels of perseveration during the task, was associated with failure. Young adults that were released from the program also appeared more anxious, as indicated by a short latency to vocalize when faced with a novel object task. Our results suggest that both maternal nursing behavior and individual traits of cognition and temperament are associated with guide dog success.
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