Dog cognitive development: a longitudinal study across the first 2 years of life.
Anim Cogn
; 24(2): 311-328, 2021 Mar.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33113034
ABSTRACT
While our understanding of adult dog cognition has grown considerably over the past 20 years, relatively little is known about the ontogeny of dog cognition. To assess the development and longitudinal stability of cognitive traits in dogs, we administered a battery of tasks to 160 candidate assistance dogs at 2 timepoints. The tasks were designed to measure diverse aspects of cognition, ranging from executive function (e.g., inhibitory control, reversal learning, memory) to sensory discrimination (e.g., vision, audition, olfaction) to social interaction with humans. Subjects first participated as 8-10-week-old puppies, and then were retested on the same tasks at ~ 21 months of age. With few exceptions, task performance improved with age, with the largest effects observed for measures of executive function and social gaze. Results also indicated that individual differences were both early emerging and enduring; for example, social attention to humans, use of human communicative signals, independent persistence at a problem, odor discrimination, and inhibitory control all exhibited moderate levels of rank-order stability between the two timepoints. Using multiple regression, we found that young adult performance on many cognitive tasks could be predicted from a set of cognitive measures collected in early development. Our findings contribute to knowledge about changes in dog cognition across early development as well as the origins and developmental stability of individual differences.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Reversão de Aprendizagem
/
Cognição
Tipo de estudo:
Observational_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Anim Cogn
Assunto da revista:
MEDICINA VETERINARIA
Ano de publicação:
2021
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos