Tag : toys

Budapest (Hungary): Researchers from the Family Dog Project (Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest) found out in a recent study that dogs have a "multi-modal mental image" of their familiar objects. This means that when thinking about an object, dogs imagine the object's different sensory features. For instance, the way it looks or the way its smells. The findings of the study were published in journal of Animal Cognition. The group of scientists assumed that the senses dogs use to identify objects, such as their toys, reflect the way the objects are represented in their minds. "If we can understand which senses dogs use while searching for a toy, this may reveal how they think about it" explains Shany Dror, one of the leading researchers of this study. "When dogs use olfaction or sight while searching for a toy, this indicates that they know how that toy smells or looks like". In previous studies, the researchers discovered that only a few uniquely gifted dogs can learn the names of objects. "These Gifted Word Learner dogs give us a glimpse into their minds, and we can discover what they think about when we ask them - Where is your Teddy Bear? -" explains Dr. Andrea Sommese, the second leading researcher. In the first experiment, they trained 3 Gifted Word Learner dogs and 10 typical family dogs (i.e., dogs that do not know the name of toys), to fetch a toy associated with a reward. During the training, dogs received treats and were praised for choosing this toy over a few distractor toys. The researchers then observed how the dogs searched for the targeted toy, always placed among 4 others, both when the lights were on and off. All dogs successfully selected the trained toys, both in the light and in the dark. However, it took them ...