Open AccessAcquisition and long-term memory of object names in a sample of Gifted Word Learner dogs
Author(s) -
Shany Dror,
Ádám Miklósi,
Andrea Sommese,
Andrea Temesi,
Claudia Fugazza
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
royal society open science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.84
H-Index - 51
ISSN - 2054-5703
DOI - 10.1098/rsos.210976
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , vocabulary , cognition , word (group theory) , term (time) , psychology , short term memory , age of acquisition , period (music) , cognitive psychology , computer science , working memory , linguistics , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , acoustics
Dogs with a vocabulary of object names are rare and are considered uniquely gifted. In a few cases, these Gifted Word Learner (GWL) dogs have presented cognitive skills that are functionally similar to those of human infants. However, the acquisition rate of new object names and the ability of GWL dogs to form long-term memories of those is unknown. In this study, we examine the ability of six GWL dogs to acquire the names of new objects in a short period and to retain those in their long-term memory without post-acquisition exposures. In Experiments 1 and 2, the dogs were tested on their ability to learn, during social interactions with their owners, the names of 6 and 12 new toys respectively, in one week. In Experiments 3 and 4, the dogs' memory of these objects was tested after one and two months. GWL dogs typically learned the names of the new objects and remembered those. We suggest that dogs with knowledge of object names could be a powerful model for studying mental mechanisms related to word acquisition in a non-human species.