Traveling through: exploring doctoral demographics in archival studies

The growth of archival studies programs has prompted archival scholars to establish an international network for supporting collaborative research, curriculum development, and pedagogy. Doctoral education is key to the sustainability of such programs and the continuation of the network over time. We carried out longitudinal research to survey the population of doctoral students attending one or more Archival Education and Research Institutes (AERI), an annual meeting first held in 2009. Building on prior research on graduate archival education, we gathered demographic and qualitative data about doctoral students specializing in archival studies who are based in several countries including the USA. We sought to assess attendee motivations, guide conference planning, and help advance overall AERI objectives. Our study provides a baseline understanding of the disciplinary backgrounds, research directions, and specific professional development activities that doctoral students in archival studies pursued around the globe from 2013 to 2015. This paper argues that doctoral education should continue to be a particular subject of archival research and indicates how archival students’ range of academic interests is diversifying and strengthening the scholarly community.     

Can your dog read your mind?: Understanding the causes of canine perspective taking

Prior studies have documented the domestic dog’s (Canis lupus familiaris) sensitivity to human attentional state, including a tendency to preferentially beg for food from attentive individuals and an ability to selectively perform forbidden behaviors when humans are not looking. Due to the success of dogs on perspective-taking tasks, some have hypothesized that domestic dogs may have theory of mind, or the ability to infer what other individuals know. Here we provide the first evidence that nondomesticated canids, grey wolves (Canis lupus), are also sensitive to human attentional state under some conditions. We also demonstrate that dogs do not display an undifferentiated sensitivity to all visual cues of attentional state. Rather, dogs are more sensitive to stimuli encountered in their home environment. Some dogs perform poorly on perspective-taking tasks. These findings have important implications for the interpretation of research designed to understand complex social cognition across species.     

Any reward will do: Effects of a reverse-reward contingency on size preference with pet dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis lupus familiaris</Emphasis>)

The reverse-reward contingency (RRC) task involves presenting subjects with a choice between one plate containing a large amount of food and a second plate containing a small amount of food. Subjects are then required to select the smaller of the two options in order to receive the larger-magnitude reward. The RRC task is a commonly used paradigm for assessing complex cognition, such as inhibitory control, in subjects. To date, the RRC task has not been tested with pet dogs as subjects, and it may provide insights to their ability to perceive quantities of differing magnitudes. Nine dogs were tested in an RRC task involving three conditions. In Condition 1, plates of food were presented, and the dogs were allowed to consume their choice. In Condition 2, plates with different-sized symbols resembling the quantities of food in Condition 1 were presented, and dogs received food quantities of the same size as their choice (e.g., a larger-magnitude reward for selecting the plate with the larger shape). In Condition 3, the same plates were presented, but dogs received a reverse-sized quantity of food, relative to their choice (e.g., a smaller-magnitude reward for selecting the plate with the larger shape). A novel addition here to the traditional RRC task was the inclusion of a third, empty (control) plate that was present throughout all conditions, and no programmed consequences were provided when that plate was selected. Our results were consistent with the previous RRC literature: All dogs developed and maintained a preference for the larger stimulus option across conditions. The use of symbolic representations did not ameliorate performance on the RRC task. Applied implications are discussed.