Dec 10, 2019 04:08 AM
https://aeon.co/essays/why-science-needs...iners-know
EXCERPT: . . . The canine brain has begun to interest scientists only in the past few decades. Yet, while academia has been slow to study the science of dogs, dog trainers have been making their own discoveries about canine cognitive abilities. One of those discoveries is called imitation. It means observing someone else perform a behaviour that’s new to you, and then performing it yourself.
[...] I hit the brakes and replayed the video so I could see for myself. ... Could dogs really watch someone do something, then ‘map’ it onto their own bodies?
[...] We might use elaborate techniques to train dogs to do complex tasks, but these are usually built on the same simple foundation of assisted trial-and-error. We assume that, if dogs have any imitation skills at all, they are primitive and not useful in training. Yet the dog in the video demonstrated not only basic imitation, but the more advanced skill of mapping something done to her onto something she did to someone else. Could dogs really use imitation to learn, and not just in a very basic sense? What would that say about their abilities compared with apes’ abilities? These were the questions that had me pulling over my car in surprise.
[...] While most people think of primates and dolphins as intellectually exceptional, Ken Ramirez says his early training experience at a guide-dog school taught him to consider dogs as incredibly smart animals. What impressed him was ‘intelligent disobedience’ – the rare times when a guide dog needed to refuse his handler’s command, for his handler’s safety. It was up to the dog to make that judgment.
[...] When Ramirez discussed his work with dog-dog imitation at a conference, he got pushback from the scientific community: where was the evidence? Did he have videos? He didn’t. It had never occurred to Ramirez to document his dog training. But when he next planned to work on imitation with dogs, he figured he ‘may as well’ set up a double-blind study to prove that the dogs were really doing what he thought they were.
Despite his seemingly casual decision to embark on this study, his design was meticulous: the imitating dog was positioned so that he could not see or hear the first dog’s handler, who had given the cue. Ramirez’s results indicated that the dogs really were imitating each other. This time he got videos. And this time he wrote it up as a scientific article, currently in the process of being published.
[...] the study of canine cognition has bloomed in recent decades. A rich literature now exists on topics such as the limits of canine vocabularies – some dogs can learn up to 1,000 words. In addition to detour experiments, researchers have investigated whether dogs are good at teamwork with other dogs, and how they handle difficult or impossible tasks. (Unlike wolves, dogs tend to give up and ask humans for help.)
But dog trainers, not academic researchers, were the first to try expanding canine vocabularies into the realm of hundreds of words, not to mention tackling the question of how to convince dogs to persist at solving difficult tasks. More and more, people who train dogs are pushing the limits of what dogs can learn. In the past few years, for example, ‘concept training’ has become popular – teaching dogs a set of rules instead of a specific action. One application of this training is ‘match to sample’, in which the dog has to match two objects based on an attribute such as shape, size or colour. Another is ‘modifier words’, such as ‘slowly’, ‘quickly’, ‘left’ or ‘right’. The dog has to apply these words to other commands: heel, but do it slowly. Retrieve the object on the left.
Are dogs really doing what their trainers think they are, or is a Clever Hans effect in play? This is where researchers can step in to provide carefully designed tests.
[...] But the flirtation between dog training and dog science was short-lived. While trainers are teaching dogs adverbs such as ‘slowly’, the published research about canine vocabulary stopped at nouns and verbs. ... scientists have not yet tested the efficacy of newer training methods, such as approaches to reducing the near-inevitable frustration of training new skills with assisted trial-and-error (or ‘shaping’). Match-to-sample is used in working dogs who act as forensic tools, matching items from a crime scene to a person in a lineup, but dogs’ ability to match colours, shapes, sizes or numbers remains untested. Imitation has been tested, but there remains much to learn about whether dogs can easily map tasks done to them onto tasks done to others, map body parts between species, or use functional replication.
The perspective of dog trainers, with their deep experience in real-world canine abilities, provides a rich source of theories for academics to test. Collaboration between dog trainers and research scientists could lead to a partnership that deepens our understanding of canine cognition. Dog trainers will keep exploring dogs’ learning limits. Now it’s up to the scientists to reach out and use this resource. If only the trainers could say to the scientists: ‘Do it!’ ... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: . . . The canine brain has begun to interest scientists only in the past few decades. Yet, while academia has been slow to study the science of dogs, dog trainers have been making their own discoveries about canine cognitive abilities. One of those discoveries is called imitation. It means observing someone else perform a behaviour that’s new to you, and then performing it yourself.
[...] I hit the brakes and replayed the video so I could see for myself. ... Could dogs really watch someone do something, then ‘map’ it onto their own bodies?
[...] We might use elaborate techniques to train dogs to do complex tasks, but these are usually built on the same simple foundation of assisted trial-and-error. We assume that, if dogs have any imitation skills at all, they are primitive and not useful in training. Yet the dog in the video demonstrated not only basic imitation, but the more advanced skill of mapping something done to her onto something she did to someone else. Could dogs really use imitation to learn, and not just in a very basic sense? What would that say about their abilities compared with apes’ abilities? These were the questions that had me pulling over my car in surprise.
[...] While most people think of primates and dolphins as intellectually exceptional, Ken Ramirez says his early training experience at a guide-dog school taught him to consider dogs as incredibly smart animals. What impressed him was ‘intelligent disobedience’ – the rare times when a guide dog needed to refuse his handler’s command, for his handler’s safety. It was up to the dog to make that judgment.
[...] When Ramirez discussed his work with dog-dog imitation at a conference, he got pushback from the scientific community: where was the evidence? Did he have videos? He didn’t. It had never occurred to Ramirez to document his dog training. But when he next planned to work on imitation with dogs, he figured he ‘may as well’ set up a double-blind study to prove that the dogs were really doing what he thought they were.
Despite his seemingly casual decision to embark on this study, his design was meticulous: the imitating dog was positioned so that he could not see or hear the first dog’s handler, who had given the cue. Ramirez’s results indicated that the dogs really were imitating each other. This time he got videos. And this time he wrote it up as a scientific article, currently in the process of being published.
[...] the study of canine cognition has bloomed in recent decades. A rich literature now exists on topics such as the limits of canine vocabularies – some dogs can learn up to 1,000 words. In addition to detour experiments, researchers have investigated whether dogs are good at teamwork with other dogs, and how they handle difficult or impossible tasks. (Unlike wolves, dogs tend to give up and ask humans for help.)
But dog trainers, not academic researchers, were the first to try expanding canine vocabularies into the realm of hundreds of words, not to mention tackling the question of how to convince dogs to persist at solving difficult tasks. More and more, people who train dogs are pushing the limits of what dogs can learn. In the past few years, for example, ‘concept training’ has become popular – teaching dogs a set of rules instead of a specific action. One application of this training is ‘match to sample’, in which the dog has to match two objects based on an attribute such as shape, size or colour. Another is ‘modifier words’, such as ‘slowly’, ‘quickly’, ‘left’ or ‘right’. The dog has to apply these words to other commands: heel, but do it slowly. Retrieve the object on the left.
Are dogs really doing what their trainers think they are, or is a Clever Hans effect in play? This is where researchers can step in to provide carefully designed tests.
[...] But the flirtation between dog training and dog science was short-lived. While trainers are teaching dogs adverbs such as ‘slowly’, the published research about canine vocabulary stopped at nouns and verbs. ... scientists have not yet tested the efficacy of newer training methods, such as approaches to reducing the near-inevitable frustration of training new skills with assisted trial-and-error (or ‘shaping’). Match-to-sample is used in working dogs who act as forensic tools, matching items from a crime scene to a person in a lineup, but dogs’ ability to match colours, shapes, sizes or numbers remains untested. Imitation has been tested, but there remains much to learn about whether dogs can easily map tasks done to them onto tasks done to others, map body parts between species, or use functional replication.
The perspective of dog trainers, with their deep experience in real-world canine abilities, provides a rich source of theories for academics to test. Collaboration between dog trainers and research scientists could lead to a partnership that deepens our understanding of canine cognition. Dog trainers will keep exploring dogs’ learning limits. Now it’s up to the scientists to reach out and use this resource. If only the trainers could say to the scientists: ‘Do it!’ ... (MORE - details)