Predicting success in assistance dog training for blind and deaf individuals: Is early sensitivity to human verbal and gestural communicative cues pre

辅助犬训练成功了吗？视力和听力损失影响着全球数百万人。患有这些疾病的人不仅面临日常的身体挑战，还面临孤独和精神健康不良的心理困难。与一只援助犬合作可以帮助缓解一些挑战，并有助于显著改善盲人和聋人的幸福感，促进积极的社会互动。在英国，帮助狗的训练和照顾完全依靠慈善基金。不幸的是，训练辅助犬的费用非常昂贵，部分原因是开始训练的狗中只有不到一半的人成功完成了训练计划。此前旨在了解辅助犬失败原因的研究主要集中在气质和行为特征上。然而，行为特征在发育过程中并不稳定，因此可能不能作为成功辅助犬的早期预测指标。到目前为止，最少的研究集中在成功辅助犬的认知能力上。由于之前的研究发现认知能力在发育过程中是稳定的，它们可能是选择接受正式训练的狗的理想早期标志。如果我们更好地了解成功的援助犬的认知特征以及这些认知能力的发展轨迹，那么我们或许能够创造出一套测试电池，用来识别最有希望的候选人，并将其引入成本高昂的培训计划。在认知方面，狗对人类声音和视觉交流信号的敏感度是成功训练和满足最终伴侣需求的关键，然而在之前的研究中，这一社会认知方面并未被充分检验为帮助狗成功的预测因素。建议研究我们将与两家慈善机构英国导盲犬和聋人听力狗合作，尝试建立一个早期的社会认知筛选程序，以评估帮助狗的适合性，减少浪费在训练不太可能成功的狗上的资金，并让更多的人得到帮助。为了实现这一目标，我们将首先对这些慈善机构的经验丰富的训练师进行半结构化访谈，并对回答进行专题分析，以确定一系列可能对通过正式训练的狗重要的认知技能。然后，我们将对导盲犬和聋人助听器饲养的200只狗进行纵向研究。我们将在狗的发育过程中对狗进行多点测试，以更好地了解狗的社交能力，包括狗与人的交流能力是如何在生命的第一年发展的。关键的是，我们将检验它们在不同年龄的社交任务中的表现与它们在各自培训计划中的成功之间的预测关系。建议的方法我们的目标是在7-8周、6个月和12个月的一系列社交认知任务中测试样本。测试单元将包括对人类交流线索(狗引导的语音、手势信号)的敏感度，以及对人类帮助解决问题的依赖，以及我们采访经验丰富的驯狗师提供的其他任务。我将使用广义线性混合模型来检验(I)在早期时间点在任务上的表现预测在稍后时间点上在相同任务上的表现以及(Ii)变化Ella Williamsonin在三个时间点在社会认知任务上的表现可以解释在正式援助犬训练计划中不成功的差异

predictive of success in assistance dog training?Sight and hearing loss affect millions of people worldwide. Individuals with these conditionsnot only face daily physical challenges but also psychological difficulties with loneliness andpoor mental health. Partnering with an assistance dog can help alleviate some of thesechallenges and help to significantly improve wellbeing and facilitate positive socialinteractions in blind and deaf individuals. In the UK, the training and care of assistance dogsrelies solely on charitable funds. Unfortunately, training assistance dogs is extremely costly,partly because less than half of the dogs who begin training successfully complete theprogramme.Previous research aiming to understand reasons for assistance dog failure has focused ontemperament and behavioural characteristics. However, behavioural traits are not stableover development and therefore may not be useful as an early predictor of a successfulassistance dog.Up to now, minimal research has focused on cognitive abilities of successful assistancedogs. As previous research has found cognitive abilities to be stable over development, theymay be ideal early markers to use in selection of dogs for formal training. If we betterunderstood the cognitive profile of successful assistance dogs and the developmentaltrajectories of those cognitive abilities, then we may be able to create a test battery thatcould be used to identify the most promising candidates to put forward into the costly trainingprogrammes. Within cognition, dog sensitivity to human vocal and visual communicativesignals is key to success in training and meeting the needs of their eventual partner, yet thisaspect of social cognition has not been adequately examined as a predictor of assistancedog success in previous research.Proposed studyWe will partner with two charities, Guide Dogs UK and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, toultimately try and establish an early social cognition screening process to assess assistancedog suitability, to reduce money wasted on training dogs who are unlikely to succeed andallowing more people to be helped. In order to realise this aim we will first conduct semi-structured interviews with experienced trainers for these charities and conduct thematicanalysis on the responses to identify a range of cognitive skills that might be important fordogs passing formal training. We will then conduct a longitudinal study with a sample of 200dogs bred by Guide Dogs and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. We will test dogs at multiplepoints over their development, to establish a better understanding of how dog socialcognition, including dog-human communicative abilities, develop over the first year of life.Critically we will then examine predictive relationships between their performance on socialcognition tasks at different ages and their success in their respective training programmes.Proposed methodsWe aim to test the sample on a battery of social cognition tasks at 7-8 weeks, 6 months and12 months. The test battery will include sensitivity to human communicative cues (dog-directed speech, gestural signals) and reliance on humans to assist with problem solving, inaddition to other tasks informed by our interviews with experienced dog trainers. Thecharities will provide data on the performance and ultimate success of the dog in their formaltraining programmes.Proposed analysisI will use Generalised Linear Mixed Models to examine whether (i) performance on tasks atearly timepoints predicts performance on the same tasks at later timepoints and (ii) variationElla Williamsonin performance on the social cognition tasks at three timepoints can explain variation insuccess on the formal assistance dog training programme