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Little heed was taken of the prescient views of Tolman in the 1930s when he suggested that mental representations formed in the brains of animals could enable them to possess a cognitive map of their environment, develop expectancies about outcomes and plan their actions in the world. Associative learning principles, especially those espoused by Skinner, are central to animal training. Operant procedures are powerful techniques and their use in training help to establish the motor behaviours that are the basis of skilled action by the guide dog. However, for the dog to become a safe and fluent guide for a vision impaired person it will be necessary for it to employ the cognitive processes of selective attention, pattern recognition, categorisation, discrimination, prediction and the mental representation of knowledge and its translation into action. Above all the guide dog needs to be a confident decision maker and problem solver, capable of operating with purposeful intent within a set of rules. If the dog is to guide its vision impaired owner safely in town or city, stopping at kerbs, avoiding pedestrians and street furniture, manoeuvring around ladders and helping its owner cross roads safely, it will need to be much more than a well conditioned and unthinking robot! Skill acquisition by the guide dog would appear to be dependent upon an interplay between stimulus driven [bottom-up] and mentally driven [top-down] processes. This book will be of value to dog owners and professional trainers, education and training staff of guide dog schools, students of animal and human cognition, veterinary staff, and anyone who has a curiosity about how the guide dog does its job.
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THE SKILFUL MIND OF
THE GUIDE DOG TOWARDS A COGNITIVE AND HOLISTIC MODEL OF TRAINING
Bruce Johnston Bruce Johnston is a psychologist. He lost his sight in a car accident in 1963 at the beginning of his fourth year as a medical student. As an alternative career he chose to study psychology, qualifying from the University of Sheffield in 1967. Before joining Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (UK) in 1992 as their Psychology and Training Consultant, Johnston had over 25 years of experience as a college lecturer.
Bruce Johnston
Johnston has been a guide dog owner for 47 years. He trained with his first dog in 1965. He now lives in Berkshire with his wife Jane.
Such was the success of the campaign of the school of Behaviourism to rid psychology of any mentalistic explanations of animal behaviour, just about everyone came to believe very little of importance went on in animal brains. Even very complex behaviour by animals was viewed as the product of mechanistic and non-cognitive processes.
THE SKILFUL MIND OF THE GUIDE DOG
The writing of the first edition of this book in 1990 stemmed from his work in developmental and cognitive psychology, education and disability, and his interest, at the time, in the burgeoning discipline of animal cognition. “The Skilful Mind of the Guide Dog” formed the basis of his developmental and educational work with the Association, and foreshadowed the publication of “Harnessing Thought” in 1995.
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