Quote:
Originally Posted by alextsakiris  A couple of additional thoughts:
- I think working with canines might reduce chances of this occuring (although I can't be sure). It's seems plasubile that humans could get bored or fall into behaviors that might explain this effect (at least in some instances).
- And... the decline effect is another reason why we must be careful when altering any aspect of the dog's home environment. We don't want to turn this into "dog training"... although that might be an interesting follow-on research project. |
I agree, I don't think that the dog is likely to become bored over time if the experiment is performed at a low enough trial rate (if you did, say, ten trials a day with the same dog/owner, day after day, though, that would be a different matter). The human participants are another matter. Decline in results of performance based tests while the experimenters, lab techs, mentors, and other participants lose their initial enthusiasm is a routine occurrence in many scientific fields.
I was, by the way, addressing the suggestion that deliberate training be done to reinforce the desired behavior for the dogs. I was warning that this needs to be done with care -- if they can be trained they will be mistrained under the wrong circumstances. This is true whether or not the classic psi decline effect is due to this (as it probably mostly isn't).