Steven Payne (Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education) and his graduate students recently on the role of human attention on the behavior of shelter dogs. In the paper, they assess whether attention serves as a reinforcer to teach new behavior to dogs, if they can condition attention to serve as a reinforcer, and if the methodology by which they assess attention influences the results (it does). Implications for interpreting previous research in light of these findings, as well as suggestions for future research in this area are discussed.
