Minor: psychology
Toria is a research assistant in the Canine Cognition and Human Interaction lab and assists with several projects, including our Dog Impulsivity study. This study investigates whether owners can predict their dog’s impulsivity in a task that allows dogs to travel a short distance for a small treat or a longer distance for a larger treat. In collaboration with other lab assistants, Toria helps measure the dogs’ impulsivity, which is later compared to the owners’ responses to a survey about their dog’s impulsivity.
Toria joined CCHIL over the summer after hearing about it in the weekly psychology advising emails.
When asked what she likes most about being in the lab, Toria responded that she most loves “being able to interact with each dog and use her dog body-language reading abilities to analyze if he or she is willing to participate”. Toria also mentioned that being a part of our lab has “broadened my understanding of how the research process works; recruiting participants, running the protocols, and using my knowledge to create a bias-free data collection, then bringing all the pieces together for publishing”.
Her end career goal is to study the interactions between humans and large marine mammals, and to see how we influence each other.
