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Stanley Coren (born 1942) is a psychology professor, neuropsychological researcher and writer on the intelligence, mental abilities and history of dogs. He works in research and instructs in psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He writes for Psychology Today in the feature series Canine Corner. Background Coren was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1942 to a secular Jewish family and attended undergraduate classes at the University of Pennsylvania before earning his doctorate at Stanford University. He went on to teach in The Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research in New York, New York before moving to the University of British Columbia in 1973, where he was a psychology professor and the Director of the Human Neuropsychology and Perception Laboratory until 2007. He teaches and researches as a professor emeritus and serves as an adjunct professor in the graduate program at Bergin University of Canine Studies. Outside of the classroom, Coren is an aficionado of dogs, and has made a career of research into dog behaviour that has led him to national television and into international media. He is an instructor with the Vancouver Dog Obedience Training Club, and has participated in obedience trials and competitions across Canada. Research In his career, Coren has produced research papers and published items in a wide range of psychological areas including sensory processes (vision and hearing), neuropsychology (handedness, sleep, birth stress effects and behavior genetics) and cognition (information processing and intelligence). He has published more than 400 papers and articles in journals like Science, Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine and many more. His research has been recognized with numerous awards over the years, including being named as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. One of his publications, Sensation and Perception, (co-authored with Lawrence M. Ward and James T. Enns) has been listed as required reading for university coursework and went through six editions before his retirement in 2007. Coren's research in psychology can be divided into four distinct areas. Sensory processes Coren began his research career studying vision and visual processes. Much of his early work dealt with various visual illusions, and was done in collaboration with Joan. S. Girgus. They are credited with reopening the interest of psychologists in these visual phenomena, and pointing out how they shed light on basic visual processing. He is also credited with several breakthroughs in the study of what is known as subjective contours or illusory contours Later Coren and A. Ralph Hakstian developed methods for screening vision and hearing without the use of technical equipment, using behaviorally validated questionnaires. These allow group or survey testing for sensory deficits specifically for color blindness, color discrimination ability, visual acuity, binocular vision and stereopsis and hearing sensitivity or absolute threshold of hearing. These tests have been widely disseminated and can be found reprinted in various psychological and sensory textbooks. Handedness Coren worked on left-handedness and its causes and consequences, with his co-researchers, Diane F. Halpern, Clare Porac, and Alan Searleman. Specifically his research led him to believe that left-handedness could be a marker for various psychological and physical problems. The media became interested in this work when findings began to emerge indicating that left-handedness was often associated with difficult or stressful births. Research showing that left-handers were much more susceptible to accident-related injuries because the constructed world and most machinery and tools are designed for the safety and convenience of right-handers evoked a great deal of interest and press coverage. However the work that caused the largest stir and the most controversy was a series of studies in collaboration with Diane F. Halpern which showed that left-handers have shorter life spans, often dying younger because of accidents or problems associated with a compromised immune system (possibly a long-term consequence of birth stress related trauma). Although originally the source of much controversy, with confirming data coming from a number of other laboratories, these conclusions have become well enough accepted to appear in basic psychological textbooks. The discovery of a possible genetic basis of left-handedness suggests that there may be two types of left-handers, natural left-handers and a separate group who arrive at their left-handedness because of birth stress and are more susceptible to immune system related problems. Coren has suggested that in addition to genetics and birth stress other mechanisms might also contribute to the appearance of left-handedness, such as hormonal factors as in the Geschwind–Galaburda hypothesis. Sleep Coren 's research into sleep deprivation suggests that this is contributing to accidents, psychological disturbances, and increased susceptibility to illness. This line of reasoning eventually led to the series of studies which demonstrated that simply losing one hour of sleep due to the shift to daylight saving time can cause an increase in traffic accidents and other accident related fatalities on the Monday following the time change Dog behavior and the human–canine bond Later in his career, Coren shifted to the study of canine behavior and the relationship that people have with their dogs. This shift away from neuropsychological research also marked a shift in his publishing strategy, away from single study publications in research journals, to publication of his new data as part of material presented in popular book form. Many of his books on dogs do contain previously unpublished empirical data. For example, his book The Intelligence of Dogs is based on a survey sent to all of the dog obedience judges in the United States and Canada, and resulted in the ranking of 110 dog breeds by intelligence. This ranking caused a rather large media stir. His book Why We Love the Dogs We Do looks at the personality of people and how the owner's personality predicts their relationship with various dog breeds. It is based on a survey of more than 6000 people who took a personality test and reported on their experiences with the various dogs that they have owned. This book proved to be very popular and Coren's personality test is now used by some dog shelters to determine whether prospective owners are suitable for a particular breed of dog. Similarly, his book Why does my dog act that way? uses data from approximately a thousand dogs to determine features of the personality of various dog breeds. However other books that he has written on dog behavior have provided less formal data presentation and in these his creative contribution is based on the organization and interpretation of the research of others, as is the cas.... Discover the Stanley Coren popular books. 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