Attention-Seeking and Demand Behavior in Dogs: What Holds Up

1. What "Demanding" Describes

1.1 A Label, Not a Diagnosis

"Demanding" assigns a motive to behaviors that can be described without one: nudging, pawing, barking, whining, bringing a toy, blocking movement, climbing onto a lap or repeatedly approaching a person. The useful first step is therefore descriptive: what happened immediately before the behavior, what did the dog do, and what happened next (why description comes before interpretation).

This does not mean that social contact is irrelevant. Dogs are highly social animals, and owner access itself can function as reinforcement. Feuerbacher and Wynne (2016) demonstrated experimentally that access to the owner can reinforce behavior in domestic dogs. The point is narrower: the label "demanding" does not tell us which consequence is maintaining a particular behavior.

1.2 Attention-Seeking Exists as a Measured Trait Dimension

Behavioral questionnaires include attention-seeking as a dimension, with items such as following the owner, sitting close and soliciting contact (Hsu & Serpell, 2003). Questionnaire factors describe patterns in owner reports. They do not establish that every behavior within the factor has the same function or emotional basis.

1.3 There Is Direct Canine Functional-Analysis Research

The canine literature is small, but it is no longer accurate to say that function is only inferred from general learning principles. Functional analyses have been used directly with companion dogs to test whether behaviors are maintained by attention, access to objects, escape or other consequences.

Pfaller-Sadovsky et al. (2019) analyzed jumping up in five dogs. Access to a preferred object maintained jumping in four dogs, while owner attention maintained it in one. Waite and Kodak (2022) used owner-implemented functional analyses with three dogs showing problematic mouthing and identified attention, and in one case also access to a tangible, as maintaining consequences. Salzer et al. (2025) extended this approach to several problem topographies including jumping, mouthing and elopement.

A 2026 review of the canine functional-analysis literature identified a behavioral function in 27 of 28 reviewed cases; attention and access to tangible items were among the most common reinforcers (Ayvaci & Saini, 2026). These are small single-case data, not population-level prevalence estimates, but they establish an important point: function can be tested in dogs rather than merely guessed.

1.4 Asking Is Not a Problem by Itself

A dog that signals a need to go outside, solicits social contact or brings a toy is not displaying a disorder merely because the behavior was initiated by the dog. Whether a request becomes problematic depends on intensity, frequency, context, household impact and, critically, what is driving and maintaining it.

A useful plan therefore does not aim to eliminate all initiation. It defines which signals the household is willing to respond to, which behaviors should be redirected, and which presentations require a different explanation altogether.

2. The Learning Account

2.1 Behavior Can Have a Demonstrable Function

In operant terms, a consequence is a reinforcer only if it increases the future probability of the behavior it follows. Attention, food, opening a door, starting play, removing a harness or ending handling can all function as reinforcers in the right individual and context. They do not do so by definition.

This distinction matters because the same topography can have different functions. A dog may jump because jumping has produced human contact, while another may jump because it has produced access to a toy. A plan based on the wrong function can fail even if the trainer has described the behavior perfectly.

2.2 Correction Can Function as Reinforcement

Eye contact, talking, touching or pushing a dog away are social consequences. Humans may intend them as correction, but their behavioral effect has to be determined from what happens afterwards. In the owner-implemented analyses by Waite and Kodak (2022), forms of owner interaction including physical contact could function as attention maintaining mouthing in some dogs.

So the precise statement is not "negative attention is still attention." It is: social responses intended as correction can function as reinforcement for some dogs, and the effect is shown by the future behavior.

2.2a What Counts as Attention

Households consistently underestimate what functions as a consequence. Eye contact, saying the dog's name, sighing, getting up to move away, pushing the dog off and looking up from a screen all qualify, and several are usually delivered while someone believes they are ignoring the dog.

That is why plans fail before they start. A procedure in which the person speaks to the dog every third attempt is not extinction; it is an intermittent schedule delivered in a stern tone.

2.3 Intermittent Reinforcement Can Increase Persistence

Behavior that sometimes produces its previous reinforcer can be resistant to extinction. That makes household inconsistency clinically relevant, but the exact effect depends on the reinforcement history and schedule (how reinforcement schedules work).

It is therefore plausible that a behavior answered only occasionally becomes persistent. It is not necessary to invoke status, entitlement or stubbornness to explain that pattern.

2.4 "Manipulation" Adds More Than the Data Require

Calling the dog manipulative adds a claim about motive that is unnecessary for functional analysis. Dogs can intentionally communicate with humans and adjust signaling to social context, but the behavior can be assessed without deciding what the dog believes about the owner's mental state.

The clinically useful question is not whether the dog is "trying to manipulate" someone. It is what reliably changes after the behavior and whether that consequence changes its future probability.

2.4a Why "Testing Boundaries" Is the Wrong Frame

The status reading — the dog is pushing to see what it can get away with — imports a model of dog-human relationships that does not hold up, and it points households toward confrontation rather than toward the contingency that maintains the behavior (why dominance is the wrong frame).

Nothing is lost by dropping it. A functional description explains the same observations and, unlike the status account, indicates what to change.

2.5 Positive and Negative Reinforcement Can Look Similar

A dog that paws until petting begins and a dog that mouths until handling stops may produce superficially similar behavior for different outcomes. In the first case, the consequence may be access to social contact; in the second, escape or avoidance may be relevant.

This is why function cannot be read from appearance alone. The consequence and its effect on later behavior have to be considered (why the contingency matters).

3. When It Is Not Primarily an Attention Problem

3.1 Unmet Needs

A dog may approach, vocalize or paw because it needs access to elimination, water, food, movement, rest or social contact. Calling such behavior "demanding" does not determine whether the request is excessive or reasonable. Basic needs and the daily routine have to be assessed before a behavior-reduction plan is chosen.

3.2 Rest, Activity and Arousal

Insufficient rest can contribute to dysregulated behavior, but it is not scientifically established as the most common cause of attention-seeking presentations. Likewise, a dog that cannot settle is not reliably diagnosable as either "understimulated" or "over-aroused" from that observation alone.

Sleep, activity, opportunities for exploration, social contact and the timing of arousing events are therefore differential variables to record rather than conclusions to infer from a single behavior (how canine sleep and rest are studied).

3.2a Rest Deficit Looks Like Boredom

The most common misreading in practice is an over-aroused, under-rested dog described as bored, with a plan that adds activity. The discriminating observation is what happens when nothing is on offer: an under-occupied animal settles once the day has had enough content, while an over-aroused one does not settle regardless (how arousal is described and worked with).

Both presentations produce following, nudging and starting things in the evening. The interventions are opposites, which is why this distinction comes before any protocol.

3.3 Pain and Medical Change

A new or marked behavioral change without an obvious environmental explanation increases the priority of medical assessment. Pain and other medical problems can alter activity, irritability, social contact and the ability to settle (Mills et al., 2020).

This does not mean that every new contact-seeking behavior is medical. It means that training should not be used to explain away a change that may have a clinical component.

3.3a Why Pain Comes First in the Sequence

Treating a learned behavior as medical costs a consultation. Treating pain or distress as a learned behavior costs the dog weeks of deliberately withheld responses while the underlying problem continues (how pain changes behavior).

Given that asymmetry, the exclusions belong at the start of the process rather than after a failed plan. That is a judgment about consequences, not a claim that medical causes are the most common ones.

3.3b Age-Related Change

Increased clinginess and contact-seeking appear among the behavioral changes described in aging dogs, alongside altered sleep-wake patterns and disorientation. An older dog that becomes noticeably more insistent is a clinical question before it is a training one (what changes in aging dogs).

3.4 Anxiety and Distress

Repeated proximity-seeking, following or vocalizing can occur in anxiety-related presentations. In those cases the visible behavior may resemble attention-maintained responding while the treatment target is different. Withholding social contact is not a substitute for diagnosing the emotional and environmental context.

3.5 Frustration During Reinforcer Omission

Dogs do show behavioral effects when an expected reward is omitted. Bentosela et al. (2008) demonstrated changes during reinforcement omission and extinction of a learned gaze response. More recently, Dzik et al. (2025) found increased frustration/stress-related behavior when expected food reinforcement was withheld; owner presence attenuated that response.

This matters because extinction is not an emotionally neutral event simply because it is technically defined as withholding a previously reinforcing consequence.

4. Functional Analysis: Test the Hypothesis Where Possible

4.1 What a Functional Analysis Does

A functional analysis systematically changes antecedents and consequences to test which outcome maintains a behavior. In human applied behavior analysis, common test functions include social attention, access to tangibles, escape and automatic reinforcement. Modified versions have now been demonstrated with dogs.

4.2 Jumping Up

Pfaller-Sadovsky et al. (2019) tested five companion dogs. For four, jumping was maintained by access to a preferred object; for one, owner attention was the maintaining consequence. That finding is a useful warning against treating every jump as "attention-seeking."

The same study then used time-based, noncontingent reinforcement. Jumping decreased clearly in several dogs, although the sample was small and outcomes were not identical across individuals.

4.3 Mouthing

Waite and Kodak (2022) trained owners to conduct functional analyses with three dogs. Attention maintained mouthing in the dogs tested, with access to a tangible also relevant in one case. Function-based interventions using reinforcement procedures reduced mouthing in all three dogs.

4.4 Broader Canine Evidence

Salzer et al. (2025) used functional analysis and treatment across several canine problem behaviors. The 2026 review by Ayvaci and Saini identified 28 reported canine cases across the available functional-analysis literature and found a function in 27. The evidence base therefore exists, but it remains dominated by small single-case experimental designs.

That is a different limitation from saying there is no canine evidence. Single-case experiments can show experimental control within individuals; they do not tell us how common a function is in the wider dog population.

4.4a Why the Function Matters More Than the Topography

Two dogs that both paw at an arm may be maintained by different consequences: one by contact, the other by the person standing up and moving, which ends an interaction the dog found uncomfortable. The behavior looks identical and the plans are different.

That is the practical payoff of the functional framing. Without it, a plan is chosen by what the behavior looks like, which is the level at which most household advice operates (why the mechanism changes the plan).

4.5 Functional Analysis Is Not Always Appropriate to Recreate

Experimental analysis should not require provoking dangerous aggression, severe fear or medically risky behavior. In many clinical cases the function has to be approached through history, structured observation, video and low-risk tests rather than by reproducing the full problem.

The principle still holds: treat the function as a hypothesis and look for observations that could disconfirm it.

5. Extinction: What "Ignoring" Actually Means

5.1 Extinction Is a Contingency Change

If attention previously maintained a behavior, withholding attention following that behavior can constitute extinction. If attention was not the reinforcer, ignoring the dog is not extinction of that behavior at all. This is another reason why function has to come first.

5.2 The Extinction Burst Is Possible, Not Inevitable

In a classic review of 113 human clinical data sets, Lerman and Iwata (1995) found an initial burst in 24% of cases. Bursts occurred in 36% of extinction-alone applications and 12% when extinction was combined with other operant procedures. Those figures are from human applied behavior analysis and should not be presented as canine household prevalence.

Muething et al. (2024) later found the same overall 24% prevalence in a record review of 108 human clinical cases. Importantly, their review did not establish a simple rule that one particular alternative-reinforcement procedure always prevents a burst.

5.3 There Is Direct Canine Extinction Research

Canine work does not yet tell us how often an extinction burst occurs in households. It does show that dogs change behavior under reinforcer omission and extinction (Bentosela et al., 2008) and can display frustration-related responses when expected reward is withheld (Dzik et al., 2025).

That supports a more careful message than "ignore it and wait it out." Extinction is a learning procedure with behavioral and potentially affective consequences, not a test of who is more persistent.

5.4 Relapse Has Several Forms

Behavior can return after extinction. Different patterns have different names: return after time is spontaneous recovery; return when the context changes is renewal; return after contact with the previous reinforcer can involve reinstatement or rapid reacquisition depending on the arrangement (why extinguished behavior can return).

These effects do not mean extinction erased the original learning. They are reasons to train a durable alternative and generalize it across relevant contexts.

5.4a Frustration Is Part of the Procedure

Withholding an expected consequence produces frustration-related behavior: faster repetition, louder versions, sometimes mouthing or grabbing. That is a predictable property of reward omission rather than a character problem (how frustration is described).

It is also the strongest argument for never running extinction alone. A dog left with a situation it used to be able to influence and no remaining way to do so is in exactly the position this literature warns about.

5.5 When Extinction Is the Wrong Procedure

Withholding social responses is not a treatment for pain, unmet physical needs, fear or separation-related distress. Nor is it useful when the behavior is maintained by something other than attention. The operation only makes sense when the withheld consequence is actually the consequence maintaining the behavior.

6. Function-Based Treatment

6.1 Differential Reinforcement

DRA and DRI reinforce an alternative or incompatible behavior while the treatment changes the consequence for the problem behavior. In the canine literature, function-based reinforcement procedures have reduced jumping and mouthing in small single-case studies (Pfaller-Sadovsky et al., 2019; Waite & Kodak, 2022; Salzer et al., 2025).

The useful principle is not simply "put the dog on a mat." The alternative has to contact a consequence that matters to that dog and has to be feasible in the situations in which the old behavior occurs.

6.2 Noncontingent or Time-Based Reinforcement

Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) delivers the relevant reinforcer independently of the target response. Pfaller-Sadovsky et al. (2019) used time-based reinforcement after functional assessment of jumping. A later experiment with six dogs and an arbitrary rug-stepping response found that NCR reduced responding in three dogs, with stronger effects when combined with extinction (Pfaller-Sadovsky et al., 2022).

These studies provide direct canine support for response-independent access to a relevant reinforcer as one possible intervention. They do not prove that simply scheduling generic "attention time" will solve every contact-seeking presentation.

6.3 Teach a Request Only If the Household Can Use It Consistently

A household may deliberately teach a low-intensity request signal — for example a station, a specific posture or bringing an object — and reinforce that signal under defined conditions. This can make communication clearer, but the exact signal and schedule are training choices rather than empirically established universal rules.

A request that is not always answered can still be useful. What matters is that the contingency is understandable and workable; it is too strong to claim that an intermittently available request is automatically worse than having no request at all.

6.4 Do Not Invent a Learning History

If a dog barks during dinner, one hypothesis is that food or social interaction has followed barking in the past. If a dog begins nudging whenever a laptop opens, one hypothesis is that this context predicts reduced access to the person and nudging has previously restored interaction. Neither history should be asserted without evidence.

The practical approach is to test what currently follows the behavior and what changes when the contingency is altered.

6.4a What Happens When the Behavior Is Distress-Driven

Where following and contact-seeking are part of a separation-related or anxiety presentation, the behavior is not an attempt to obtain something pleasant but an attempt to reduce distress, and withholding a response adds to it (what separation-related behavior looks like).

That is the one situation where the whole framework of this article does not apply, which is why the differential in Section 3 is not a formality.

6.5 Punishment Does Not Answer the Functional Question

Aversive consequences can suppress behavior, but suppression does not by itself tell us whether the maintaining motivation, need or emotional state has changed. Broader companion-dog research associates aversive-based training with poorer welfare indicators compared with reward-based approaches (Vieira de Castro et al., 2020).

The functional question remains the same after punishment: what was the dog obtaining or escaping, and what should happen instead?

6.6 Punishment in Practice

Beyond failing to address the function, punishment adds an aversive event to a situation the dog entered in order to obtain something, and it suppresses the quiet early version of the behavior while leaving the motivation in place (what punishment costs).

The wider evidence on aversive-based training points the same way (Vieira de Castro et al., 2020), and in this particular presentation there is an additional cost: the behavior is often the dog's only way of indicating a need, and removing the indicator does not remove the need.

7. A Practical Assessment Framework

7.1 Record the Sequence

Use several representative situations rather than an arbitrary fixed number of days. Record the context, antecedent, exact behavior, who was present, what each person did next, how the episode ended and whether the pattern changed later.

The aim is not to prove a theory from a diary. It is to generate competing hypotheses that can be tested safely.

7.1a Turning a Complaint Into a Record

Households arrive with a summary rather than a record: he never leaves me alone, she demands attention constantly. Those statements are accurate about the experience and nearly useless for planning, because they contain no situation, no frequency and no consequence.

Three questions convert them. When does it happen, what does the dog actually do, and what do you do next. Most cases narrow to a handful of recurring situations at that point, which is the difference between a problem that feels constant and one that can be worked on.

7.2 Ask What the Behavior Produces

Does the dog gain touch, eye contact, play, food, movement, access to another area or access to the owner? Does something stop — handling, confinement, distance from a preferred person? Or does the behavior occur without an obvious social consequence?

If a consequence repeatedly follows the behavior, that makes it a candidate reinforcer. It becomes a stronger explanation when changing that contingency changes the behavior.

7.3 Check the Differential Explanations

Ask whether the behavior is new, whether physical health has changed, whether the dog is sleeping and resting adequately, whether daily needs are met, and whether fear, separation-related distress or frustration better account for the pattern. A visible behavior can be operantly reinforced and still occur in an emotional or medical context.

7.4 Choose a Low-Risk Intervention That Matches the Hypothesis

If attention maintains the behavior, options can include differential reinforcement, time-based access to attention, clearer availability cues and extinction of the specific attention contingency where appropriate. If escape maintains it, the intervention has to address the handling or task context instead. If pain or distress is driving the presentation, behavior reduction is not the first target.

7.5 Measure Progress Broadly

Useful measures include frequency, duration, intensity, latency to settle, use of the trained alternative, recovery after an episode and whether the dog can communicate needs without escalating. Complete silence or zero initiation is not a meaningful universal outcome.

7.6 Three Situations in Practice

The dog that starts when the laptop opens. Quiet all morning, insistent the moment someone sits down to work. Usually a reliable contingency — that is the one time of day when nudging produces contact — plus a rest routine never arranged around working hours.

The dog that barks at dinner. The behavior has a precise history: someone, at some point, handed something down. Intermittent answers from different family members keep it going, which makes this a case for household agreement rather than technique.

The dog that will not settle in the evening. The most often mislabeled. An animal that has been alone all day, or has not slept properly, is reporting a deficit, and the plan starts with the day rather than with the evening.

7.7 What to Tell a Household

Four sentences cover most consultations. The behavior continues because it has worked, not because the dog is testing anyone. Answering sometimes is what makes it persistent, so the household has to agree on what gets a response. Teach the version you want before withholding the one you do not. And if anything changed recently and nobody knows why, the veterinarian comes before the training plan.

8. Breed, Age and Individual Differences

8.1 Breed Is a Weak Individual Predictor

Morrill et al. (2022) found that breed explained about 9% of variation across the owner-reported behavioral traits assessed in their large genomic study. That does not mean breed explains 9% of all behavior, and it does not provide a breed-specific diagnosis for attention-seeking.

8.1a Development in Young Dogs

In young dogs, contact-seeking is expected rather than aberrant, and the behavior profile shifts as they mature. Households that treat an eight-month-old's insistence as a permanent trait often install management that is no longer needed a year later (what changes during development).

The distinction worth drawing is between behavior that is developmentally ordinary and behavior the household's responses are actively building. Both can be present at once, and only the second calls for intervention at that age.

8.1b Why the Behavior Often Targets One Person

Most households report that the dog directs this at one member more than the others, and the obvious reading — the dog prefers that person — is usually the weaker one. The stronger candidate is that this person's responses have been the most reliable, or the most variable in the way that builds persistence.

Testing it is simple: who answers, how often, and what happens when the others are alone with the dog. The answer is frequently surprising to the household and decisive for the plan.

8.2 Age Matters, but the Specific Development of "Demand Behavior" Is Unknown

Kinsman et al. (2025) followed owner-perceived undesirable behaviors from 6 to 18 months. Barking, pulling on lead and recall problems changed significantly across age points, while jumping up at people did not show a significant age effect in their modeled analysis.

The study did not establish a developmental trajectory for attention-seeking or "demand behavior" as a category. It should therefore not be used to predict that an eight-month-old dog's contact solicitation will simply disappear by adulthood.

8.3 Individual Social Motivation Varies

Dogs differ in their interest in human interaction and in what functions as reinforcement. Feuerbacher and Wynne (2016) demonstrated that owner access can be reinforcing, but reinforcing value is not identical across dogs or situations. A plan can change behavior without trying to make a highly social dog indifferent to people.

8.4 Individual Social Motivation

Two dogs in the same household, with the same routines and people, can differ substantially in how much contact they seek. Differences of that kind are described as stable individual characteristics rather than as training outcomes (how individual differences are described).

That matters for expectations: a plan can change what a dog does and how often, and it will not turn a highly social animal into an indifferent one.

9. Research Gaps and Critical Appraisal

"Demand behavior" is not a standardized diagnosis. The label covers multiple topographies and possible functions, so prevalence and natural course of the presentation as a whole remain unknown.

Canine functional analysis exists, but the evidence base is small. The 2026 review identified 28 cases across the published functional-analysis literature, with a function identified in 27 (Ayvaci & Saini, 2026). Most evidence comes from single-case experimental designs rather than large clinical trials.

Attention and tangibles are demonstrated functions, not universal explanations. Jumping, mouthing and other behaviors have been maintained by different consequences across dogs. Population-level frequencies cannot be inferred from the current case literature.

Canine treatment evidence exists, but comparisons are limited. Functional-analysis-guided DRA/DRI, NCR and extinction-based packages have produced reductions in small studies. Large head-to-head trials comparing these approaches are lacking.

Canine extinction-burst prevalence in ordinary households is unknown. The often-cited 24%, 12% and 36% figures come from human clinical data (Lerman & Iwata, 1995; Muething et al., 2024), not from pet dogs.

Dogs do show extinction and reward-omission effects. Direct canine studies demonstrate behavioral change and frustration-related responses when expected reinforcement is omitted (Bentosela et al., 2008; Dzik et al., 2025), but these do not establish the frequency or magnitude of household extinction bursts.

Household consistency and treatment fidelity remain understudied. Owners can implement functional analysis and treatment with training, but we have little data on how ordinary multi-person households maintain protocols over months.

The overlap with anxiety, pain and unmet needs remains clinically important and poorly quantified. Functional reinforcement and emotional/medical influences are not mutually exclusive.

Developmental data are incomplete. Young-dog behavior changes with age, but the specific developmental course of attention-maintained social solicitation has not been established.

9.1 What Would Move the Field

Three things. Owner-implemented functional analyses tested at scale rather than in single-case designs. A description of how often household contact-seeking presentations turn out to be distress-driven rather than learned. And canine data on extinction parameters: how long procedures take, how often recovery occurs, and what predicts success.

The single-case literature has shown that the methods transfer to dogs and to owners. What is missing is the scale at which a practitioner could tell a household what to expect.

9.2 A Minimal Plan

For a typical case the sequence is short. Exclude medical causes where anything changed. Log two weeks of situations and responses. Fix rest and routine. Decide what the behavior appears to produce and check that against what happens when the consequence is withheld in one low-risk situation. Teach an alternative away from the problem context. Agree in the household what gets answered and at which point in the sequence.

None of that has been tested as a package in dogs. It is assembled from the single-case functional-analysis work, the extinction literature and the differential explanations that come first.

10. Conclusion

"Demanding" is not a diagnosis. It is a human interpretation of behavior that may have very different functions. The strongest way to approach these cases is functional rather than moral: describe the sequence, identify plausible consequences, test those hypotheses where it is safe to do so, and keep pain, anxiety, frustration and unmet needs on the differential.

The canine evidence base is small but real. Owner access can function as reinforcement; functional analyses have identified attention, tangibles and escape as maintaining variables in companion dogs; and function-based interventions including differential reinforcement and noncontingent reinforcement have reduced problem behaviors in small single-case experiments (Feuerbacher & Wynne, 2016; Pfaller-Sadovsky et al., 2019, 2022; Waite & Kodak, 2022; Salzer et al., 2025; Ayvaci & Saini, 2026).

That evidence does not justify a universal "ignore the dog" protocol. Extinction only applies when the withheld consequence is the reinforcer, reward omission can generate frustration, and the canine prevalence of household extinction bursts is unknown. The practical standard is therefore simple: identify the function before choosing the consequence.

Key Insights (Takeaways)

• "Demanding" is an attribution; the behavior, context and consequence are the measurable parts.

• Owner attention and owner access can function as reinforcement in dogs, but they do not maintain every apparently attention-seeking behavior.

• Functional analysis has been used successfully with companion dogs; a 2026 review identified a function in 27 of 28 published cases.

• Direct canine studies support function-based treatment, including differential and noncontingent reinforcement, but the samples are small.

• The familiar 24% extinction-burst figure comes from human clinical literature, not pet-dog households.

• Dogs can show frustration when expected reinforcement is omitted, so extinction is not an emotionally neutral event.

• Pain, anxiety, physical needs and rest/activity patterns remain differential explanations and can coexist with learned reinforcement histories.

• The useful question is not whether a dog is manipulative or spoiled, but what the behavior currently changes for that dog.

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