Behavioural and Physiological Correlates of the Canine Frustration Questionnaire

Frustration is a negative emotional state implicated in a range of canine behaviour problems. The Canine Frustration Questionnaire (CFQ) is the first psychometric tool developed to assess frustration tendencies in dogs based on owner report. However, to date, no published studies have assessed behavioural and physiological correlates of this trait. A novel behaviour test battery was developed to induce frustration in dogs, mapping onto the CFQ. Forty-four dogs were recruited and filmed whilst undertaking the test battery, and a CFQ was completed by each owner. Targeted behavioural measures were assessed from this footage, based on hypotheses aimed at evaluating convergent and discriminant validity with facets of the CFQ. In addition, a saliva sample was collected pre- and post-testing for 39 dogs, and a cortisol assay performed using ELISA to provide a physiological measure of arousal. A range of predicted behavioural test measures (e.g., vocalising and lunging) positively correlated with CFQ scores. For 22 dogs with pre-test salivary cortisol levels of <4 ng/mL (indicative of normal arousal at baseline), cortisol change and post-test cortisol levels positively correlated with the CFQ PC5 ‘Frustration coping’ score. These results provide further evidence of the validity of frustration tendencies as measured by owner report through the CFQ.

Intentions and Cyberterrorism

This chapter focuses on intentions and cyberterrorists. In defining cyberterrorism as the use, or threat of use, of cyberspace to deliver violence, through the disruption or destruction of digital data, the chapter captures potentially novel behaviour. It highlights the claims made by intelligence officials about terrorists’ intentions of using cyberspace. It then interrogates to what extent this matches the literature on terrorist motivations and intentions, and whether cyberspace is an attractive means for carrying out terrorist attacks. Finding that a simple cost–benefit analysis does not favour cyberspace as a means of carrying out terrorist acts, the chapter interrogates the vectors of change both on the intentions and capability side of the assessment. It closes with the analysis of a hypothetical case that would match the definition of cyberterror: a religiously inspired version of the Ashley Madison hack.

Need or opportunity? A study of innovations in equids

Debate persists over whether animals develop innovative solutions primarily in response to needs or conversely whether they innovate more when basic needs are covered and opportunity to develop novel behaviour is offered. We sourced 746 cases of “unusual” behaviour in equids by contacting equid owners and caretakers directly and via a website (https://innovative-behaviour.org), and by searching the internet platforms YouTube and Facebook for videos. The study investigated whether differences in need or opportunity for innovation were reflected in the numbers of different types of innovations and in the frequencies of repeating a once-innovative behaviour (i) with respect to the equids’ sex, age, and breed type, (ii) across behavioural categories, and whether (iii) they were affected by the equids’ management (single vs group housing, access to roughage feed, access to pasture, and social contact). We found that the numbers of different types of innovation and the frequency of displaying specific innovations were not affected by individual characteristics (sex, age, breed or equid species). Few types of innovation in escape and foraging contexts were observed, whilst the comfort, play, and social contexts elicited the greatest variety of innovations. We also found higher numbers of different types of innovations in horses kept in groups rather than in individual housing, and with unlimited rather than with restricted access to pasture and roughage. Equids in permanent social contact performed high rates of once-innovative behaviour. We suggest that equids produce goal-directed innovations and repeat the behaviour at high frequency in response to urgent needs for food and free movement or when kept in conditions with social conflict. However, equids devise the greatest variety of innovations when opportunity to play and to develop comfort behaviour arises and when kept in good conditions.

BIAS: A Toolbox for Benchmarking Structural Bias in the Continuous Domain

Benchmarking heuristic algorithms is vital to understand under which conditions and on what kind of problems certain algorithms perform well. Most benchmarks are performance-based, to test algorithm performance under a wide set of conditions. There are also resource- and behaviour-based benchmarks to test the resource consumption and the behaviour of algorithms. In this article, we propose a novel behaviour-based benchmark toolbox: BIAS (Bias in Algorithms, Structural). This toolbox can detect structural bias per dimension and across dimension based on 39 statistical tests. Moreover, it predicts the type of structural bias using a Random Forest model. BIAS can be used to better understand and improve existing algorithms (removing bias) as well as to test novel algorithms for structural bias in an early phase of development. Experiments with a large set of generated structural bias scenarios show that BIAS was successful in identifying bias. In addition we also provide the results of BIAS on 432 existing state-of-the-art optimisation algorithms showing that different kinds of structural bias are present in these algorithms, mostly towards the centre of the objective space or showing discretization behaviour. The proposed toolbox is made available open-source and recommendations are provided for the sample size and hyper-parameters to be used when applying the toolbox on other algorithms.

BIAS: A Toolbox for Benchmarking Structural Bias in the Continuous Domain

Benchmarking heuristic algorithms is vital to understand under which conditions and on what kind of problems certain algorithms perform well. Most benchmarks are performance-based, to test algorithm performance under a wide set of conditions. There are also resource- and behaviour-based benchmarks to test the resource consumption and the behaviour of algorithms. In this article, we propose a novel behaviour-based benchmark toolbox: BIAS (Bias in Algorithms, Structural). This toolbox can detect structural bias per dimension and across dimension based on 39 statistical tests. Moreover, it predicts the type of structural bias using a Random Forest model. BIAS can be used to better understand and improve existing algorithms (removing bias) as well as to test novel algorithms for structural bias in an early phase of development. Experiments with a large set of generated structural bias scenarios show that BIAS was successful in identifying bias. In addition we also provide the results of BIAS on 432 existing state-of-the-art optimisation algorithms showing that different kinds of structural bias are present in these algorithms, mostly towards the centre of the objective space or showing discretization behaviour. The proposed toolbox is made available open-source and recommendations are provided for the sample size and hyper-parameters to be used when applying the toolbox on other algorithms.

The distribution of controlled exhaustivity

While predicates in taxonomies (e.g. colour terms) are interpreted as mutually incompatible, this paper shows that their incompatibility is in many cases not lexical. Rather, it is the result of a previously undescribed exhaustivity effect. What is more, this class of exhaustivity effects displays novel behaviour. Exhaustivity is both obligatory and tightly constrained: at first approximation, any taxonomic predicate must be in the immediate scope of the exhaustivity operator it requires. Taxonomic predicates, in this sense, are argued to "control" exhaustivity.

Expression Unleashed

Human expression is diverse and multi-faceted, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved function of which is the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology that can explain how and why humans evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity in means and modes of expression. We make relevant cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only the evolution of languages, but novel behaviour in other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, punishment, and the arts. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of many of the most of the most distinctive features of human behaviour and societies.

Circumventing surface tension: tadpoles suck bubbles to breathe air

The surface tension of water provides a thin, elastic membrane upon which many tiny animals are adapted to live and move. We show that it may be equally important to the minute animals living beneath it by examining air-breathing mechanics in five species (three families) of anuran (frog) tadpoles. Air-breathing is essential for survival and development in most tadpoles, yet we found that all tadpoles at small body sizes were unable to break through the water's surface to access air. Nevertheless, by 3 days post-hatch and only 3 mm body length, all began to breathe air and fill the lungs. High-speed macrovideography revealed that surface tension was circumvented by a novel behaviour we call ‘bubble-sucking’: mouth attachment to the water's undersurface, the surface drawn into the mouth by suction, a bubble ‘pinched off’ within the mouth, then compressed and forced into the lungs. Growing tadpoles transitioned to air-breathing via typical surface breaching. Salamander larvae and pulmonate snails were also discovered to ‘bubble-suck’, and two insects used other means of circumvention, suggesting that surface tension may have a broader impact on animal phenotypes than hitherto appreciated.