Holly Miller

Holly Miller has been a member of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory since 2005. She received her Bachelor degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 2004, and her master degree in science from the University of Kentucky in 2007. She has diverse interests and currently is researching what and how dogs remember objects and events. For example, she has adapted Piagetian object permanence search tasks and also the gaze preference procedure for dogs. By using these methods initially developed for the pre-verbal infant she can ask a dog where it thinks hidden treats have gone, as well as what physical features about the hidden treats it can remember. She is also using the traditional matching to sample procedure (where a dog learns to match one of two comparison toys to a previously presented sample toy) to determine how long dogs can remember the physical features of the sample toy. She has studied a number of cognitive behaviors in pigeons including counting, risk taking, and the effect of effort on the relative value of rewards.