What is it about?
Studies of animal memory typically focus on what animals remember about external stimuli in their environment, but what they remember about internal stimuli, such as representations of actions they have recently performed, is largely unknown. We have shown, by training dogs to repeat recent actions on cue, that domestic dogs can recall and reproduce recently performed actions and can apply this rule to actions they have never been trained to repeat.
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Why is it important?
Our study shows that dogs can conceptualize abstract rules and generalize them to novel contexts. Human were long thought to be the only species capable of forming abstract concepts.
Perspectives
Working on this study helped me expand my training skills and discover what dogs are really capable of learning. It was a pleasuring working with these dogs and seeing them figure out how to apply the "repeat" rule to new behaviors.
Allison Scagel
University at Buffalo - The State University of New York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Do that again! Memory for self-performed actions in dogs (Canis familiaris)., Journal of Comparative Psychology, March 2022, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/com0000310.
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