Dataset Information

Cognitive characteristics of 8- to 10-week-old assistance dog puppies.

ABSTRACT: To characterize the early ontogeny of dog cognition, we tested 168 domestic dog, Canis familiaris, puppies (97 females, 71 males; mean age = 9.2 weeks) in a novel test battery based on previous tasks developed and employed with adolescent and adult dogs. Our sample consisted of Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and Labrador × golden retriever crosses from 65 different litters at Canine Companions for Independence, an organization that breeds, trains and places assistance dogs for people with disabilities. Puppies participated in a 3-day cognitive battery that consisted of 14 tasks measuring different cognitive abilities and temperament traits such as executive function (e.g. inhibitory control, reversal learning, working memory), use of social cues, sensory discriminations and reactivity to and recovery from novel situations. At 8-10 weeks of age, and despite minimal experience with humans, puppies reliably used a variety of cooperative-communicative gestures from humans. Puppies accurately remembered the location of hidden food for delays of up to 20 s, and succeeded in a variety of visual, olfactory and auditory discrimination problems. They also showed some skill at executive function tasks requiring inhibitory control and reversal learning, although they scored lower on these tasks than is typical in adulthood. Taken together, our results confirm the early emergence of sensitivity to human communication in dogs and contextualize these skills within a broad array of other cognitive abilities measured at the same stage of ontogeny.

SUBMITTER: Bray EE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7384752 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Behavioral development in domestic dogs has been investigated for predicting suitability for service dog work or for matching with the "right" families as well as for identifying predispositions to behavioral problems. Findings from the scientific literature seem to confirm that conducting behavioral tests at 7 weeks of age is too early to reliably predict the temperament and personality of a dog. However, this period for domestic dogs is sensitive for early life learning and conditions during this time could have important consequences in adulthood. The aims of this study were to evaluate inter-rater reliability of a simple standardized test and to investigate which factors influence the behavioral reaction of puppies. 105 seven-week old puppies were exposed to five subtests: social attraction, following, retrieving, sudden appearance, noise. During each task, the behaviour of each pup was scored on a 3-5 point scale that reflected the suitability of the pup's reaction to the task. Scores were evaluated for a single subtest and for two aggregate indicators (i.e. response to a person: social attraction subtest and following subtest and response to object and noise: retrieving subtest, sudden appearance subtest and noise subtest). Three assessors independently scored the dogs' reactions for each task. Inter-rater reliability of the three assessors were analyzed with Fleiss' Kappa and Kendall's coefficient, which showed a high inter-rater reliability in 4 of 5 tasks. The ordered logistic regression was carried out to obtain a proportional odds model that was used to model the relationship between sex, litter size, stimulating environment, parity of mother, adequate maternal behavior and high scores. Litter size and maternal parity were associated with test performance in response to a person. The variance of effect of litter was high in response to object and noise. Taken together, our results suggest that using this scoring system there is sufficient inter-rater reliability in the test and litter size and mother experience influences task performances related to dog-human interaction.

Dataset Information

Cognitive characteristics of 8- to 10-week-old assistance dog puppies.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets