15-4 Sat Jan 2 “Who’s a smart boy?” Qualitative variation in the ability of dogs to learning object names Dror, S*; Miklósi, A; Temesi, A; Sommese, A; Fugazza, C; Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest shanymd@gmail.com
Few studies describe the abilities of dogs to retrieve objects based on their names. These studies illustrate the behavior of only a single dog, raising the question of how common is this ability. Over two years we searched for such Word Knowledgeable (WK) dogs around the globe via social media and located six dogs that knew the names of over 15 objects. We compared the rate in which WK dogs learn words to that of naive puppies (N=13) and naive adult dogs (N=17). In weekly training sessions, owners were instructed to playfully interact with their dogs using two toys (one at a time) as they repeated the toys’ names. They continued this training on a daily basis at home. The dogs’ progress in learning the toys’ names was assessed on a monthly basis, using an object choice test with the toys positioned out of the owners’ view in order to control for a Clever Hans effect. After 3 months, none of the naïve dogs was able to learn the names of the two toys. In contrast, WK dogs learned not only the names of these two toys but also the names of additional 16-37 new toys. The findings suggest that the ability to learn object names varies qualitatively, manifesting in only a small number of exceptional individuals. During the domestication process, dogs evolved the potential for social skills that are functionally similar to those of humans, and are therefore an outstanding model for understanding cognitive processes. Dogs with exceptional word-learning skills give us a unique opportunity to study the manifestation of exceptional skills in a non-human species. The identification of this variation in a non-human species paves the way for future studies to examine the origin of variation in human socio-cognitive performance.
