11/7/2023 0 Comments Do dogs have good memoriesEven though the dogs had no reason to think they needed to remember what the owner had done, and they had no prior training with that action, they successfully repeated it. In the next phase of the experiment, after the dogs were lying down reliably, the experimenters had the owners surprise the dogs by saying, “Do it!” after performing an action that had not yet been trained or tested. This took away the dog’s expectation to imitate what they were seeing. This time, they were taught to lie down after watching the human action, no matter what that action was. Once they had mastered the “Do it!” cue, and had learned to repeat their owner’s action, they were given another round of training. In the study, 17 dogs were taught the “Do as I Do” method of imitation, performing behaviors like placing their paws on a chair or touching an umbrella with their nose. Fugazza and her colleagues modified the “Do as I Do” technique to take away the dogs’ expectation to imitate what they observed and consequently test their episodic-like memory. In a recent research study in the journal Current Biology, Dr. Therefore, the dog can’t be expecting to have his recall tested or be anticipating any sort of reward when making the initial observation. To truly be episodic-like recall, the initial storing of the event in memory needs to be incidental there can’t be any knowledge that what is remembered will turn out to be important later. If the person then walks around the bucket and repeats the “Do it!” cue, the dog will walk around the bucket in response, having learned to imitate the actions of the handler.īut that isn’t testing episodic-like memory yet. It involves teaching a dog to repeat an action he has just observed when given the cue “Do it!” After initial training, if the dog watches a person look inside a bucket and then is told, “Do it!” the dog will look inside the bucket, too. Fugazza, a researcher at MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group in Budapest, Hungary, developed this method while studying imitation in dogs. Claudia Fugazza has discovered a way to essentially ask dogs what they remember by using her training technique called “Do as I Do.” Dr. It’s also a tricky subject to study because you can’t simply ask animals what they remember about their life. Episodic-like memory in animals is currently a hot topic for scientists because it’s tied to the idea of self-awareness, the ability to think about oneself, thought by some to be the great divide between humans and animals. Others have concluded a dog’s intelligence is equivalent to a 3- to 5-year-old child.Ĭlearly, more research work needs to be done.How much do you think your dog remembers about the day-to-day events in his life? Is his memory as good as yours, or is he only living in the moment? The ability to recall personal events and specific moments is known as “episodic memory,” and it’s up for debate whether dogs possess this type of memory at all. On the other hand, a 2014 National Geographic study found that dogs only remember events or exercises for two minutes. Fugazza noted that dog memory may fade a bit with time, just as it does for people. Fugazza’s research includes a 2016 study published in Current Biology that showed dogs likely have episodic memory and a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports that found dogs appear to use episodic memory. This means that dogs don’t just “live in the moment,” that they can remember things over time.ĭr. This suggests that dogs have problem-solving abilities based on similar previous experiences. Fugazza found that dogs’ accuracy and speed decreases on untrained exercises, but that they do the tasks surprisingly well. But she’s gone beyond that, teaching dogs certain exercises and then asking them to do exercises for which they’ve not been trained.ĭr. She has done numerous studies using a technique called “do as I do,” in which she basically teaches dogs to imitate her. They sure seem to, but do they really? Research on Dog MemoryĬlaudia Fugazza, Ph.D., is an expert in canine cognition. The ability to recall events is called episodic memory, and there is a big debate among scientists about whether dogs possess this ability.
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