Figure 1.
The black lines represent the tape on the floor that divided the larger room (room 1) into five zones (1: Near entrance door, 2: Neutral zone, 3 and 4: familiar person's/SA's zone and stranger's/SB's zone each containing a chair, 5: Neutral zone containing a rope tug-toy). The entrance door is at the left hand side of the figure and there is a door between room 1 and room 2 shown to the right in the picture. Room 2 was empty and was available to the dogs from episode 4.
Table 1.
Episode description.
Figure 2.
A schematic representation of predictions.
Closed boxes refer to episodes where either F (familiar person) or S (stranger) was present in the room in the FS (familiar stranger) treatment or SA (stranger A) or SB (stranger B) was present in the room in the SS (stranger stranger) treatment. The arrows indicate the comparisons that were made. According to our hypothesis, if the ASSP is a reliable method to use when assessing the bond between dogs and humans, dogs should explore (EXP) and play (PLAY) more in the presence of the familiar person and they should show more proximity seeking behaviours (PROX) towards the familiar person.
Figure 3.
Exploration levels in both treatments during the test.
Level of exploration (median proportion of sample points/episode presented together with 95% confidence intervals) across the whole test procedure (episode (Ep) 1–6) in treatment FS and treatment SS. F = familiar person, S = stranger, SA = stranger A and SB = stranger B.
Figure 4.
The level of physical contact with humans initiated by dog in both treatments.
Time spent in physical contact with person (median proportion of sample points/episode presented together with 95% confidence intervals) during the whole test procedure (episodes (Ep) 1–6) in treatment FS and in treatment SS. F = familiar person, S = stranger, SA = stranger A and SB = stranger B.
Table 2.
Proximity seeking behaviours.