The following poses an interesting argument. Are our dogs paying attention, do they understand, and will they remember? Maybe more than we realize!
Evidence that non-human animals use episodic-like memory has been hard to come by because you can't just ask a dog what it remembers. In the new study, the researchers took advantage of a trick called “Do as I Do.” For example, if their owner jumps in the air and then gives the “Do it!” command, the dog would jump in the air too.
The fact that dogs can be trained in this way alone wasn't enough to prove episodic memory. That's because it needed to be shown that dogs remember what they just saw a person do even when they weren't expecting to be asked or rewarded. To get around this problem, the researchers first trained 17 dogs to imitate human actions with the “Do as I Do” training method. Next, they did another round of training in which dogs were trained to lie down after watching the human action, no matter what it was.
After the dogs had learned to lie down reliably, the researchers surprised them by saying “Do It” and the dogs did. In other words, the dogs recalled what they'd seen the person do even though they had no particular reason to think they'd need to remember. They showed episodic-like memory.
The pups were continually tested in that manner for one minute and then again after an hour. After both the short and long intervals, the dogs were able to recall the command! However, over time the memory did fade somewhat.
For more information go to Science Daily. Would it not be fantastic if we could communicate, through practiced memory, in a broader way with our dogs and perhaps even other interesting beasts in the animal kingdom? Only time will tell!
