Dogs understand humans

As reported by StudyFinds, July 17, 2021 (links in original):

DURHAM, N.C. — Dogs really are “man’s best friend” and “get” humans in a way other animals simply can’t relate to. Sorry “Game of Thrones” fans, a new study finds even the dog’s closest relatives — wolf pups — don’t gel with people the same way.

Researchers from Duke University say 14,000 years of domestication plays a big part in this. In fact, man’s best friend has actually evolved to understand human gestures and look to humans for help in a way that no other animals do.

Study authors, who compared wolf pups raised by humans to dogs who had barely any contact with people, discovered that dogs still outperform their wolf counterparts in tests of their understanding and co-operation with humans. The team behind the research adds their results show dogs instinctively understand people.

“This study really solidifies the evidence that the social genius of dogs is a product of domestication,” says Dr. Brian Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology, in a university release.

It’s this ability, Hare says, which makes dogs such great service animals.

“It is something they are really born prepared to do,” the researcher adds.

Much like human infants, the team finds puppies intuitively understand what a human is doing when they point at something. Wolf puppies, on the other hand, did not pick up on this.

“We think it indicates a really important element of social cognition, which is that others are trying to help you,” Hare explains.

“Dogs are born with this innate ability to understand that we’re communicating with them and we’re trying to cooperate with them,” doctoral student Hannah Salomons adds.

In one test, researchers hid a treat in one of two bowls, then gave each dog or wolf puppy a clue to help them find the food. In some trials, the researchers pointed and gazed in the direction of the hidden food. For the others, they placed a small wooden block beside the right spot — a gesture the puppies had never seen before — to show them where they hid the treat.

The results reveal that, even with no specific training, dog puppies as young as eight weeks-old still understand where to go. Researchers add dogs were also twice as likely to get it right in comparison to wolf puppies around the same age who spent more time with people.

More than half (17 out of 31) dog puppies consistently went to the right bowl while none out of the 26 human-reared wolf pups did better than a random guess. Control trials showed the puppies weren’t simply sniffing out the food. Even more impressively, many of the dog puppies got it right on their first try. Absolutely no training necessary, the dogs just got what humans were doing. Despite the results, Salomons says this isn’t about which species is “smarter.”

Dog puppies and wolf puppies proved equally adept in tests of other cognitive abilities, such as memory and motor impulse control, which involved making a detour around transparent obstacles to get food. It was only when it came to the puppies’ people-reading skills that the differences became clear. “There’s lots of different ways to be smart,” Salomons explains. “Animals evolve cognition in a way that will help them succeed in whatever environment they’re living in.”

Other tests show that dog puppies are also 30 times more likely than wolf pups to approach a stranger.

“With the dog puppies we worked with, if you walk into their enclosure they gather around and want to climb on you and lick your face, whereas most of the wolf puppies run to the corner and hide,” the student researcher continues.

When presented with food inside a sealed container, the wolf pups generally tried to solve the problem on their own. Conversely, the dog puppies spent more time turning to people for help, looking them in the eye as if to say “I’m stuck, can you fix this?”

Dr. Hare believes the research offers some of the strongest evidence yet of what’s known as the “domestication hypothesis.” Somewhere between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago, long before dogs learned to fetch, they shared an ancestor with modern wolves. How these feared predators transformed into man’s best friend is still a bit of a mystery.

One theory is that, when humans and wolves first met, only the friendliest wolves would have been tolerated and gotten close enough to scavenge on early human leftovers instead of running away. Whereas the shyer, meaner wolves might go hungry, the friendlier ones would survive and pass on the genes that made them less fearful or aggressive toward humans.

The theory is that this continued generation after generation, until the wolf’s descendants became masters at gauging the intentions of people they interact with by deciphering their gestures and social cues.

The findings appear in the journal Current Biology.

HT: Vox Popoli

Child molesters go where the children are

As reported by David Rose in the London Mail on Sunday, June 23, 2018 (link in original):

A devastating report will this week expose the scale and impact of child sexual abuse across the UK.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought.

The report – obtained by The Mail on Sunday – is based on the biggest archive of evidence by abuse victims and survivors ever assembled in this country.

It presents detailed accounts from 50 of the 1,400 people who have so far given evidence to the Truth Project, part of the huge Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) set up by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought...

...Nabila's parents used to send her to their local mosque in Birmingham for religious instruction from the age of seven.

The Bangladeshi imam, Hafiz Rehman, subjected her to escalating sexual abuse for four years, finally attempting to rape her.

‘I used to think about telling my mum every day as I walked home,’ she says.

‘But I was scared. Would she believe me? How could I say such things about an imam?’

Sometimes she avoided classes by hiding in a graveyard. But she kept silent and even today, as a married mother, ‘intimacy seems dirty. If I do start to enjoy sex, I feel I must have enjoyed it when he was doing those things to me’.

She went to the police years later, and after a second mosque victim came forward, he was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 11 and a half years in jail.

Astonishingly, Rehman had been on bail and was allowed to stay at home at the end of the trial by claiming he was ill.

He had surrendered his UK passport, but had a second, Bangladeshi one – and the day after he was sentenced he fled there, where he remains. Nabila says abuse is rife in Muslim communities, but ‘never discussed, always covered up.

The culture is, “we will deal with this, we don’t need anyone’s help” – but we don’t tackle it. There is abuse in almost every Asian family.

‘They get away with it in their own community, and then they target vulnerable white girls.

‘This culture has got to change.'...

...Patrick Sandford has had a successful career as a theatre director, actor and playwright.

But for decades he hid a deeply painful secret: he was repeatedly abused by a teacher in his last year at primary school.

Like many victims, this left him terrified of intimacy: he did not have a relationship until he was 26: ‘I didn’t let anyone touch me for 15 years.

‘I thought I was the most hideous, ghastly person, and I blamed the fact I was homosexual on my abuse.’

When he finally started to talk about it decades later, ‘I realised I’d had two lives – a successful professional one and a private psychological battle’.

In 2016, to rave reviews, he wrote and began performing his story in a one-man drama entitled Groomed.

Analysis by IICSA shows 53 per cent of witnesses who spoke to the project have so far been women, while 94 per cent of perpetrators were men.

Forty per cent of victims were aged between three and seven when their abuse started and 32 per cent between eight and 11. More than a third endured multiple ‘episodes’ of abuse.

They described a wide range of consequences in later life, including depression (33 per cent), difficulties with trust and intimacy (28 per cent), thoughts of suicide (28 per cent) and actual suicide attempts (22 per cent).

It is often claimed that most sexual abuse takes place within families. But only 28 per cent of witnesses say they were abused by relatives.

Abbie was abused by a Catholic priest for four years from when she was just seven.

A friend of her family, he assaulted her on days when he took her out and when staying at her family’s home.

Now in her 50s, she told the Truth Project her ordeal ‘destroyed me as a sexual person’.

She has had a successful career and many friends but has ‘never had a serious relationship’, because she says she found sexual thoughts ‘very upsetting’.

Although her abuser was in the Church, Abbie has retained her faith and says it is important to her.

But her attempts to raise what happened with the Church in her 20s were ‘met with disinterest’, she says.

Shockingly, around a quarter were abused by teachers or other educational staff, and a fifth by adult family friends or ‘trusted members of the community’.

Fourteen per cent were abused by members of the clergy, 12 per cent by professionals such as doctors and social workers, and nine per cent by residential care workers.

Rebekah Eglinton, one of IICSA’s clinical psychologists, works closely with the Truth Project. She said: ‘We’re learning that many people have put themselves in positions of trust and authority to have access to children.

'It feels really important that we are here. People tell us again and again how silenced they have felt. This is an opportunity to end that silence and so to hear how we can better protect children.’

Dru Sharpling, the former Crown Prosecutor for London, is the IICSA panel member who heads up the Truth Project. She said some victims’ testimony has been referred to the police, leading to 14 perpetrators being convicted of child sexual abuse so far.

She added: ‘Listening to these accounts can be extremely moving. For some, it’s the first time they’ve disclosed. Others have tried and not been believed.

‘Yet often there were signs when they were still children that something was very wrong – which were not picked up. Sharing these experiences is of inherent value but they will also help IICSA make recommendations to protect children in future.’

The Truth Project continues and those wanting to share their experiences can call 0800 917 1000 or visit truthproject.org.uk.

Fin – not his real name – told the Truth Project he was abused by the head teacher at his training school after he joined the Navy as a boy sailor in the 1950s.

He said that he informed the padre, who did nothing.

Fin began wetting his bed, and went AWOL, for which he was then beaten in ‘ceremonial’ fashion.

The Navy decided Fin was ‘unfit’ to serve and discharged him. He has, he says, had ‘a good life, financially’, but has struggled with his personal relationships, avoiding attachment for fear of ultimate rejection.

‘I wonder what my life could have been like if I had not been sexually abused,’ he said.

HT: Vox Popoli

Close friendships are good for you

The psychologists who conducted this study apparently have no close friends themselves, or they'd already know this. As reported by Anne Sutherland in the Montreal Gazette, January 29, 2012:

MONTREAL - ..."We've long studied the effects of friendship on the behaviour and emotional well-being of children and we wanted to see if the HPA axis (hypothalamic, pituitary and adrenal systems) varied (under stress) when a friend is with you," said William Bukowski of his study published in the journal Developmental Psychology.

If a child is alone when he or she gets into trouble, there is a measurable increase in levels of a coping hormone and a decrease in feelings of self-worth, Bukowski said.

A group of schoolchildren, in Grades 5 and 6, were given journals to record their feelings and had their saliva tested four times a day for four consecutive days.

For privacy reasons, Bukowski would not reveal which school the children attended, but said they came from all walks of life.

They were tested and questioned before school, right after recess, after lunch and after school, the classic schoolyard periods outside of class time when bullying or hassling are most prevalent.

When the body is stressed, the adrenal glands produce cortisol, a hormone that metabolizes sugar to provide energy for the flight or fight reaction.

Bukowski and his team looked for levels of cortisol in the children as an indicator of stress levels.

Bukowski's participants who were with their best friends showed lower levels of the hormone during stressful situations.

"We knew what the experiences the kids were having through their journals, so we could monitor the cortisol levels of both positive and negative experiences," he said.

The researchers found no discernible gender difference between boys and girls and their best friends.

"We chose kids in Grades 5 and 6 because friendships are very important at this age and the child is developing the emotional patterns that will continue through adolescence," Bukowski said.

Besides handling stress, having a best friend is very good training for all that life has to offer, teaching children to take into account the needs of others and not to be selfish, Bukowski said...

Pet owners trust pets more than people

Anyone who's had a pet will wonder why this is reported as a news item:

Canadian pet owners would rather deal with their furry friends than other people, according to a recent study by Harris/Decima.

The study revealed 53 per cent of Canadians who own pets find them more reliable than people. Ninety per cent of Canadians talk to their pets and one-third have confided their deepest, darkest secrets to Fido or Milo or Hero.

There are several obvious reasons for this, such as: pets don't lie to you; they aren't mean to you; they're glad to see you; and best of all, they don't talk back.

Lonely hearts find comfort in TV characters

Subjects in one study who felt down from remembering unhappy moments of social rejection soon perked up upon writing about their favorite TV shows and characters. This supports the "social surrogacy hypothesis," where technology provides a sense of social belonging when real social connections are lacking.

"Normally rejection has a horrible effect on us, because we're a very social species," said Shira Gabriel, a psychologist at the University of Buffalo in New York who conducted four studies on the issue. "But with our favorite TV shows, we're no longer sad."

However, if George Costanza is the television character that you draw the most comfort from, you may be in trouble. These social scientists may someday discover that lonely people tend to fantasize a lot, and that lonely females like to read romance novels.

People in love use pet names for each other

Of course, if they start calling each other nasty names, this could be a sign that the relationship may be in trouble.

Terms of endearment make hearts grow fonder
Chris Zdeb, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, February 08

Sweetie. Darling. Adonis. Baby Boy. Jam Tart. Words of love: pet names for people.

They're more than terms of endearment, says registered psychologist Helen Neufeld; they enhance a relationship...

Don't marry someone you can't stand

Of course, the sooner the relationship breaks up, the less time the partners will have to get on each other's nerves.

Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 05 February 2008 02:19 pm ET

If your spouse already bugs you now, the future is bleak. New research suggests couples view one another as even more irritating and demanding the longer they are together...