Canterbury Christ Church University |

Senior Lecturer in Psychology

Teaching responsibilities

• MPSMD1EVP Evolutionary Psychology (Convenor)
• MPSMD1PCB Perspectives on Cognition and Behaviour (Convenor)
• MPSMD2ACN Animal Cognition (Convenor)
• MPSMD3PRP Psychology Research Report

Research interests

Animal cognition (in dogs, cats, equines), animal behaviour, evolutionary psychology, Gestalt psychology, psychology of everyday things

Membership of professional organisations

• ASAB Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
  
• ISAE International Society for Applied Ethology
  
• ISAZ International Society for Anthrozoology
  
• HE Academy formerly the Institute for Learning and Teaching in
• Higher Education
  
• Society for the Teaching of Psychology

Knowledge transfer

• Why cats fail to grasp string theory.  Article in the New Scientist
• Cats outsmarted in psychologist's test. Article in the Guardian
• Was weiss der Hund? Article about dog research, including mine, in the German national news magazine Der Spiegel (2007) 36, 154-156.
• A chapter on my research in the book: Schönberger, A. (2006). Die einzigartige Intelligenz der Hunde.
• How clever are dogs? News item (two minutes) by BBC 'Spotlight' South-West Regional News, 4th February 2003. Download the video.
• An article about my research in The Guardian, UK national newspaper, 27th December 2002:
  MacLeod, D.: Man's best friend is not so clever.

Recent publications

• Shivik, J.A., Palmer, G.L., Gese, E.M., Osthaus, B. (in press). Captive Coyotes Compared To Their Wild Counterparts: Does Environmental Enrichment Help? Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science
• Watson, H., Stokes, J. & Osthaus, B. (accepted). Size matters: visual discrimination of humans by dogs. Animal Cognition.
• Wills, A.J., Lea, S.E.G., Leaver, L.A., Osthaus, B., Ryan, C.M.E., Suret, M.B., Bryant, C.M.L., Chapman, S.J.A., & Millar, L. (2009). A comparative analysis of the categorization of multidimensional stimuli: I. Unidimensional classification does not necessarily imply analytic processing; evidence from pigeons (Columba livia), squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), and humans (Homo sapiens). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 123(4), 391-405.
• Whitt, E., Douglas, M., Osthaus, B. & Hocking, I. (2009). Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task. Animal Cognition, 12(5), 739, DOI 10.1007/s10071-009-0228-x
• Proops L, Burden F, Osthaus B (2008). Mule cognition: a case of hybrid vigour? Animal Cognition, doi: 10.1007/s10071-008-0172-1.
  Available from SpringerLink
  Also on the BBC Devon webpage
  And in the New Scientist
• Lea, S.E.G., Goto, K., Osthaus, B. & Ryan, C.M.E. (2006). The logic of the stimulus. Animal Cognition, 9(4), 247-256.
• Osthaus, B., Lea, S.E.G. & Slater, A.M. (2005). Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) fail to show understanding of means-end connections in a string-pulling task. Animal Cognition, 8(1), 37-47.
• Osthaus, B., Slater, A.M. & Lea, S.E.G. (2003). Can Dogs Defy Gravity?: A comparison with the human infant and a non-human primate. Developmental Science 6(5), 489-497.
• Osthaus, B., Slater, A.M. & Lea, S.E.G. (2002). Gravity rules in dogs? Proceedings of the British Psychological Society, 10(1), 22.
• Osthaus, B., Birbeck, N. and Thornton, P. (1999) Lecture on the WWW: Language in animals. Psychology Software News, 9(2), 32-34.

Conference presentations

• All animals are equal, but some canids are more equal than others.
  Poster presented at the International Ethology Conference, Budapest, Hungary, July 2005.
• Dogs do not understand means-end connections via a string.
  Talk given at the Comparative Cognition Conference, Florida, USA, March 2003.
• Like a puppy on a string: means-end tasks in dogs.
  Talk given at the Comparative Cognition Conference, Florida, USA, March 2002.
• Dogs defy gravity.
  Talk given at the Joint Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, Developmental and Education Sections, Worcester, 2001.
• Behavioural analysis of Clicker Training in Dogs.
  Talk accepted for the ASAB conference, Sheffield, 2000 (could not present because of a broken leg - mine).