The effect of age on visuo-spatial short-term memory in family dogs
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
factors such as the need of extensive pre-training, limited attention to co-occurring medical conditions, a focus on laboratory dogs, or low sample size. Therefore, we aimed to develop a test that relies on visuospatial
short-term memory, may be performed in a short time, and does not require explicit training. We tested a large sample of young and old dogs, finding that young dogs were more likely to perform correctly, although performance decreased with consecutive trials in both age groups. However, groups did not vary in the severity of mistakes. This task represents the first measure of dogs’ age-related decline of short-term spatial memory that does not require explicit training. The test could potentially be used in veterinary behaviour contexts to monitor cognitive changes in ageing dogs, utilizing a simple binary measure of
success.
Downloads
Article Details
Authors will be the copyright proprietor of their own work although they have accepted to use a creative common license, specifically CC-Attribution-NonComercial-ShareAlike_4.0
References
Folstein, M. F., Folstein, S. E., & McHugh, P. R. (1975). A practical state method for. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 12(3), 189–198. http://doi.org/10.1016/0022-3956(75)90026-6
Halmágyi, E. (2010). Családi és laboratóriumi beagle kutyák személyiségének összehasonlító elemzése [Comparative analysis of the personality of family and laboratory beagle dogs] MSc Thesis. Eötvös Loránd University.
Head, E. (2014). A Canine Model of Human Aging anD Alzheimer’s Disease. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1832(9), 1384–1389. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbadis.2013.03.016.A
Head, E., Mehta, R., Hartley, J., Kameka, M., Cummings, B. J.,
Cotman, C. W., … Milgram, N. W. (1995). Spatial learning and memory as a function of age in the dog. Behavioral Neuroscience, 109(5), 851–858. http://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7044.109.5.851
Landsberg, G. M., Nichol, J., & Araujo, J. A. (2012). Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. A Disease of Canine and Feline Brain Aging. Veterinary Clinics of North America - Small Animal Practice, 42(4), 749–768. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cvsm.2012.04.003
Lazarowski, L., & Dorman, D. C. (2015). A comparison of pet and purpose-bred research dog (canis familiaris) performance on human-guided object-choice tasks. Behavioural Processes, 110, 60–67. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.09.021
Mongillo, P., Araujo, J. A., Pitteri, E., Carnier, P., Adamelli, S., Regolin, L., & Marinelli, L. (2013). Spatial reversal learning is impaired by age in pet dogs. Age, 35(6), 2273–2282. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-013-9524-0
Svicero, D. J., & Amorim, R. (2017). Prevalence of behavioral changes in senile dogs. Clinic and Surgery, 47(2). http://doi.org/10.1590/0103-8478cr20151645
Szabó, D., Gee, N. R., & Miklósi, A. (2016). Natural or pathologic? Discrepancies in the study of behavioral and cognitive signs in aging family dogs. Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 11, 86–98. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2015.08.003
Wallis, L. J., Range, F., Müller, C. A., Serisier, S., Huber, L., & Virányi, Z. (2014). Lifespan development of attentiveness in domestic dogs: Drawing parallels with humans. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(71), 1–13. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00071