Indeed. Mostly because every study on "behavioral addictions" is published in third tier journals or is a negative result in real journals. It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals and it's current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams for rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are addictive' meme burning through current parent populations.
And despite the headlines suggesting otherwise, and the press likely running with those false headlines, *the actual study itself does not find any addictive behavior*. A null result.
>Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour, given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria. It is important to be cautious when pathologising behaviour, especially given that even in humans, addictive behaviours are still difficult to define and measure.
What about gambling, eating, or shopping?
We used have words like "vice" and "sin" to describe these poor choices, but thanks to post-60s radical individualism, the only vocabulary for describing maladaptive behavior that remains of the language of medicine. Therefore, everything bad someone does is a "disease" for which he needs "therapy" or "treatment". We've utterly lost the capacity for describing deficiencies of the conscience.
Put it another way: why would gambling companies continue to develop gambling machines? Why not stop with the mechanical, one-armed-bandit of the early 1900s if what they do has no effect on people?
But who made him start gambling in the first place? It's not like people who start gambling don't know how it ends. The most addictive slot machine in the world can't compel someone to sit at it for the first time. People KNOW these machines are addictive and choose to use them anyway.
It used to be cultural common knowledge that the wages of sin is death.
It's not "Nature", it's "Scientific Reports" with impact factor of only 3.8 vs 48 of "Nature".
Sure the publisher is "Springer Nature", and the domain is "nature.com" but that doesn't make the journal "Nature".
what is the definition here? are impulsive avoidance copings like playing a video game instead of doing the hard work of addressing the worries/planned hard activities not a “video game addiction”?
and if we are talking physical withdrawal, then how should we call the same aspect of nicotine/alcohol addiction mechanics?
The quote you cite doesn't support your claim. If there is no established criteria, then no amount of evidence will establish the link. But absent a rigorous definition, they are still giving evidence for a qualitative similarity between human addiction and the observed animal behavior. That's not a null result.
There are things you don't do but you understand not doing them is hurting you, so you decide to follow CBT (for example - there are other ways, but CBT has decent efficiency although it's expensive). They don't really need to be classified disorders or fobias.
Similarly, there are things you do and you realize not doing them would be beneficial to you. So you try to stop them and you realize it's hard. Again, you can use CBT or another method (or even medication in some cases). Whether you classify these things as "behavioral addictions" or use another term is secondary, the phenomenon itself is very real and I find it baffling anyone would dispute that.
Perhaps not surprising, working breeds – many of which are known to have been artificially selected for high toy or predatory motivation – were overrepresented in the sample.
As opposed to my Newfoundland that will tease me with the ball and then I'm obligated to chase her until she wears out, I catch her, or I bribe her with a treat.
She also has a large (about 1 food diameter) ball that can't possibly fit in her mouth and I can kick that at which point she'll drop the little ball and try to get the big one in her mouth.
Mmmmmmmmmm! Sweet sweet progress!!!
There’s a guy who trawls dog rescues looking for retrievers who are toy obsessed and then trains them to hunt truffles. He reasons you can’t reward them with food for finding even tastier food, so you have to train them with ball time as a reward/distraction when they find a trove.
Once you pull that prey drive out of a working dog and associate it with something such as a ball, there's no greater satisfaction this planet than doing the thing for that animal. It usually works better as a reward for what we're doing, is more instant, but also it can be deadly for a dog to eat food when they're at working-level activity.
There was nothing you could do to satiate his desire. If you gave in to a catch session, you could throw it 100 times, he would start coughing/convulsing from exhaustion, yet still drop a ball at your feet begging you to throw it. You could probably have killed him with it.
If no one was playing catch with him he would spend hours scouring the neighborhood for balls hidden in bushes. At one point I believe he had over 20 balls piling up in various places in our backyard. We would regularly take his balls away so he only had a couple, but more would magically appear.
We did have a little fun with this. My dad would use him as a tennis practice 'partner'. And we built a tennis ball cannon powered by M80s (note: this was mid-80s in the SFV when/where things like bottle rockets and blow guns were legal).
I've had to put down quite a few animals, and he was the only one were there was no sadness, only relief when his time came, esp. after 15 long years of having to pander to this obsessive behavior.
My belief is animals experience something similar to autism, and he was as far along the spectrum as possible, to the point where the only thing that defined him was his working instinct. That million years of mind-meld evolution w/ humans? Simply not there.
Just imagining your retriever feeling obligated to sit patiently by your side as you contribute to the pack by deconstructing your life while staring lifelessly at a flashing screen.
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> To conclude, there appear to be parallels between excessive toy motivation in dogs and behavioural addictions in humans.
Understandably, however, the must authors qualify and frame their conclusion, so later on they add:
> Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour, given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria.
When the weather is poor we have often tried to get shorter walks in dry spells but augment it with as much ball time as possible to make sure he's getting enough exercise (since he generally dislikes bad weather).
It's become apparent that there's no possibility of satiety through chasing the ball though. He will simply go forever, however tired he looks.
I joked that as a Labrador will seemingly eat itself sick, a Spaniel will run itself lame.
To get them tired, you need to chill them out and have them use their brain and/or nose.
Maybe try some sniffing games, sit down during the walk and have them just take in the environment, do some obedience that makes them think, or throw their food in the grass and have them figure it out.
They would still fixate on other behaviors they are trained on. And if not trained and neglected, often have destructive behaviors.
Incidentally I feel this way also: like I never fully grew up, and I easily regress to being trapped in a childlike state where I'll e.g. play video games all day. To snap out of it I have to "remember" to be an adult, like it's easily forgotten especially if my daily life doesn't ask me to have any serious responsibilities. maybe dogs don't have any responsibilities so they have no reason to stop playing.
They search specifically for dogs obsessed with ball chasing and turn them into rat hunting dogs.
There's funny bit where they talk about finding a dog that had learned how to use the tennis ball firing machine and spent all day chasing a tennis ball and putting it back in the machine which fires the tennis ball in a never ending loop.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/dogs-help...
cmrdporcupine•4h ago
This is a product of centuries of breeding to focus on a task and enjoy the task above all else.
iancmceachern•3h ago
captainclam•3h ago
librasteve•3h ago
tsol•3h ago
AbortedLaunch•3h ago
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/9/msaf189/8245036
namanyayg•3h ago
gigatree•2h ago
testdelacc1•1h ago