Presentation Details
| Does experience improve dogs’ performance on short-term memory tasks? Jessica McAlpin, Hannah Shope, Daniel Horschler. Hill's Pet Nutrition, Topeka, KS, USA |
Abstract
While many dog cognition tasks measure learning speed as a primary outcome (Milgram, 2003), more recent tasks often focus on spontaneous problem solving to test cognitive performance (Bray et al., 2020). However, in the latter approach, learning effects must be carefully considered. We tested if dogs performed better on a short-term memory task over the course of multiple sessions. In this task, dogs (N = 12) observed a treat concealed in one of two locations, and were then released to search after delays ranging from 10 to 40 seconds. Within this range, we observed decreasing performance with increasing delay length. Next, an odor control task confirmed that dogs performed at chance when the hiding process was blinded. Lastly, we tested a subset (n = 6) on the short-term memory task at delays of 30 and 40 seconds in three sessions, < 10 weeks apart. A linear mixed-effects model indicated that there was no significant effect of session on the proportion of correct responses, showing that dogs' performance did not improve across the test sessions (z = -1.39, p = 0.17). These results show that simple, spontaneous memory tasks are largely unaffected by short-term practice.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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