ArticleScientific reports2018
Incentive motivation in pet dogs - preference for constant vs varied food rewards.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- A reliable and holistic approach to evaluating hearing and cognitive auditory processing in adult and aged companion dogs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Screening of Chemical Residues and Antimicrobial Resistance in Dehydrated Chicken Feet Intended as Dog Treats: A Pilot Study.Veterinary medicine international · 2026Article
- Successive negative contrast: An appropriate approach to measure affective state in dogs?Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Article
- Exploring breed differences in discrimination, reversal learning, and resistance to extinction in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Handling and Training of Wild Animals: Evidence and Ethics-Based Approaches and Best Practices in the Modern Zoo.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Disentangling help-seeking and giving up: differential human-directed gazing by dogs in a modified unsolvable task paradigm.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Development of Desirable Behaviors in Dog-Assisted Interventions.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Expert considerations and consensus for using dogs to detect human SARS-CoV-2-infections.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Current Advances in Assessment of Dog's Emotions, Facial Expressions, and Their Use for Clinical Recognition of Pain.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
- Where Do We Stand in the Domestic Dog (Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- Behavioural responses to unexpected changes in reward quality.Scientific reports · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recently, there has been a move towards positive reinforcement using food rewards in animal training. By definition, rewards function as reinforcers if they increase or maintain the frequency of behaviour that they follow. However, in operant conditioning tasks animals frequently show systematic changes in performance - in particular a reduction in responding over time. One suggested strategy to avoid such performance decrements is to provide a variety of food rewards, rather than the same food reward in all trials. The enhancement of appetitive behaviour and consumption by reward variation is referred to as 'variety effect'. We investigated whether dogs preferred a variable or a constant food reward in a concurrent two-choice test. Of 16 dogs, six subjects showed a significant preference for the varied food reward and six for the constant food reward, while four dogs exhibited no significant preference for either option. At the group level, there was a significant effect of block: preference for the varied food reward increased across six blocks of ten trials each. Thus, although some individuals may prefer a single, favourite food reward in the short term, introducing variation in reward types may maintain dogs' motivation in operant tasks over a longer time period.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.