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Could someone explain dog memory for me.


Tommy Coyote
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I just read a study that basically said that dog short term memory is about 5 seconds. Now, I understand about needing to make corrections quickly or the dog won't make the association between it's behavior and the correction.

 

But this study said that if you go outside and the dogs run up to greet you. Then go back in and go back outside 10 minutes later the dogs will run up and greet you again because they will not remember that you were just outside 10 minutes ago.

 

So what goes into short term memory and what goes into long term memory. Dogs obviously have long term memory or they wouldn't ever be able to learn anything. Five minutes after you taught them "sit" they would forget it. And they don't forget it. The next day you can say "sit" and the dog remembers to sit.

 

Sometimes Zeke doesn't want to go outside in the early morning. So I gave him a treat and he went right out. Next morning he didn't want to go out again. He just sat there pointing to the treat jar and when I gave it to him he went out. He obviously remembered. Or another example is what happens when he gets into something when I'm gone. He doesn't make the connection that he was the one that made the mess. But her certainly remembers that I get upset if I come in and there is shredded paper all over the floor.

 

Has someone studied this? What am I not understanding here? What do they mean by short term memory? It's obviously not what I think of when I think of short term.

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From what I've read on these boards about training and such, the memory isn't that long but it's all about making connections that click.

 

They remember things that make sense and have results and the things that don't just go by the wayside pretty quickly. Meaningful things stick!

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Tell me your phone number and I will have forgotten in 5 seconds later. It's not (just) that I'm getting old; I could never remember phone numbers; they have always been just random noise to me.

 

Now back to dogs. I put something (food, toy, whatever) down and walk away. Maybe I take the dog with me. Later, I will see the dog searching for the thing I put down. Memory is all about forgetting most of what you see/hear/smell so that you can recall the important things. We can handle about seven plus/minus two things in our heads simultaneously (the 7 +/- two was actually in the title of a very famous paper). Dogs can handle fewer simultaneous ideas*, so they have to throw away more than us, but the same principle applies.

 

Note*: I don't know if anyone has actually tried to estimate how many.

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Tell me your phone number and I will have forgotten in 5 seconds later. It's not (just) that I'm getting old; I could never remember phone numbers; they have always been just random noise to me.

 

[..]

 

We can handle about seven plus/minus two things in our heads simultaneously (the 7 +/- two was actually in the title of a very famous paper).

 

Yes. The finding that humans can remember 7 things is what lead to the US developing 7 digit phone numbers (area codes notwithstanding).

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Link please.

The magical number seven plus minus two

This annoying paper has a habit of cropping up in diverse fields; presentation technique (i.e. designing Powerpointless slides), Human Computer Interaction, Psychometrics... It is often misquoted, misused and misunderstood, but it does appear to touch on something very deep in the human mind.

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Tell me your phone number and I will have forgotten in 5 seconds later. It's not (just) that I'm getting old; I could never remember phone numbers; they have always been just random noise to me.

 

Names are random noise to me, for no discernible reason. My brain blanks over them. It also intermittently refuses to retrieve even well-known ones.

 

This is why all the dogs in the house respond to 'Eh, you!'

 

GentleLake- I think you've hit the nail on the head there.

 

Anyone have a link to this article? Sorry if I missed it when I was reading the thread.

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JohnLloydJones, I think you bring up a good point above.

 

Even in humans, short term memory is going to vary, depending on the significance of what is happening. If I caught a glimpse of a famous person that I greatly admire walking down the street, I am going to remember that forever!! I'm not going to forget 5 seconds later.

 

But yeah, tell me your phone number and I will probably lose those numbers to my memory immediately.

 

I'd say dogs are very much the same. I honestly believe that Bandit knows exactly where he has stashed every toy in the house!! When I ask him for a "hollee", he will go right to some of the oddest spots and produce one!! But if a rock bounces as he walks through the gravel on the path, he very likely forgets as quickly as I will forget those numbers.

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Names are random noise to me, for no discernible reason. My brain blanks over them. It also intermittently refuses to retrieve even well-known ones.

It's worse than that. Yesterday at the dog park, I saw a woman come in with two familiar dogs; Pepe and Tiki. I had no problem remembering their names, yet I really had to struggle to remember the woman's name. Just afterwards, another dog Noah came with his person; I still haven't managed to remember that lady's name.

[... and there's my wife who seems always to mix up the names of our (closely aged) daughters. She will recite the two names (in random order) so one of them is right. ]

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I found the article out on Huffington Post. There was one article on 2-28-15 and another one on 3-15-15.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/short-term-memory/

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/28/dog-memory-short-term_n_6769604.html

 

I have always believed that dogs process incoming information just like we do. The stuff they don't need isn't retained and the stuff they do need stays.

 

I googled canine memory study and there are also a number of studies out there where they have found that dogs have good memories and do remember things from the past. The way they process information is just like we do. The stuff that sticks is just different because what's important to them is different than what is important to us.

 

What's really different is that animals are always in the present and they don't have the ability to see ahead or plan ahead. We have trouble staying in the present for any length of time and we are really good at thinking about the future and new possibilities.

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Dear Doggers,

Thanks to Ms. Coyote. The study abstract is at http://www.su.se/english/research/research-news-archive/new-findings-on-animal-memory-1.222566. It seems this is a compilation of previous studies, some at least designed by skinnerites (the red dot experiment).

 

On unfamiliar terrain, the sheepdog will seek the sheep wherehe found them yesterday. If you take the dog from a bone and return hours later he'll search for it where it was. Dogs never forget old enemies and some never forget important human friends. These observations are anecdotal, not science, but they are more informative than the cited study. Bullshit is bullshit, even swedish 'scientific' bullshit.

 

Donald McCaig

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What's really different is that animals are always in the present and they don't have the ability to see ahead or plan ahead. We have trouble staying in the present for any length of time and we are really good at thinking about the future and new possibilities.

I'm not so dogmatic about that anymore. Certainly dogs are different from us, but I am increasingly of the opinion that it's more a matter of degree rather than the black and white "animals are always in the present" point of view. I have plenty of (anecdotal) evidence that dogs can and do plan ahead. Not in any way like us, perhaps, but they do plan ahead.

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I can't ever remember seeing my dogs do anything that made me think they were planning ahead. This is just my observation and not scientific at all. It just seems to me that my dogs are always in the present. That doesn't mean they don't remember stuff or incidents. But I don't think they ever waste their time reliving the past the way humans do.

 

I've always thought my animals have about the same consciousness that I do. They notice things going on in their environment, process incoming stuff, remember the important things, figure out problems. Dogs can problem solve and maybe that isn't staying in the present. But I can't remember any actually planning for the future kinds of things.

 

I have a noticed a big difference in just general intelligence between my border collies and some of the other breeds I take care. A lot of the little, cute fuzzy guys aren't anywhere near as smart as my dogs are.

 

Have you noticed how really smart dogs just have a very interested kind of twinkle in their eyes? Tommy and Zeke not so much but boy howdy Joey sure has it.

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The study wasn't really about short term memory and long term memory per se, but about a specific type of long term memory called episodic memory. I know nuthin' about memory science, but according to wikipedia, which we all know is an infallible source of information, episodic memory "is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge) that can be explicitly stated....others named the important aspects of recollection which includes visual imagery, narrative structure, retrieval of semantic information and the feelings of familiarity." And then, amusingly, wikipedia uses a fear of dogs after being bitten by a dog as an example of episodic memory. So, if you are a person that develops a fear of dogs after being bitten, voila, episodic memory! But dogs who also clearly can develop a fear of other dogs after being bitten don't have episodic memory?

 

Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm a scientist, but then I assure myself that the above is not science.

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I have plenty of (anecdotal) evidence that dogs can and do plan ahead.

 

Me, too. The idea that dogs are incapable of rational planned thought is just more bullshit, imo. It may not be panning as far into the future as we do (but then, how can we prove or disprove that?), but I've seen too many examples of a dog planning and making decisions to believe it's not possible.

 

As JLJ say, it may be different than the way we do it, but they're definitely capable of it.

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I can't ever remember seeing my dogs do anything that made me think they were planning ahead.

 

I used to have a pointer/retriever mix (Pointriever?) who was a terrible roamer, so we got an Invisible Fence system for him.

 

He learned his boundaries but still wanted to roam. Some days he would sit just outside the warning zone and contemplate crossing the fence. Some days he'd decide not to do it and come back into the main part of the yard.

 

Other days, though, he'd sit there and think about it. We could see him visibly start to tense up to brace himself for the shock he knew he was going to get when he crossed the fence. Then he'd dash across and have a little fun investigating the neighborhood.

 

He was never willing to get the shock again when he came home. He'd sit just on the other side and bark and whine till we came to take the collar off so he could cross without getting another shock.

 

I dunno about you, but I'd call that planning.

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Now that you mention it, I have taken care of dogs that get out of the electric fences. The one I know that is terrible about that is an American Bull Terrier but I'm not sure just how body sensitive he is. He loves to roam and he will just run thru the fence but not when anyone is home. He only goes when he knows the coast is clear.

 

My dogs are pretty good at anticipating stuff but I wouldn't call it planning. When I used to drive them up to Smithville Lake one of the dogs would start to bark 5 miles away. My Zeke only gets into stuff when I'm not there but they may just be that he gets bored when I'm gone and starts looking for something to while away the time. And they anticipate getting fed every morning. And they anticipate going out to play with the neighbor's dogs when they hear her garage opening up. They anticipate my coming thru the door when they see my car.

 

I just can't think of anything I would actually call planning ahead. We may very well be talking about 2 different things.

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I saw this comment on this actual article and I thought it was good. I personally don't understand how anyone who lives with a dog could say they don't have a long term memory...but this comment made me think...

 

"The question is not whether or not dogs have memory but whether they can remember a particular day, in this case, yesterday. That involves having a developed sense of time. There is no doubt that dogs can learn when things happen. Dinner for Speck is at 5pm. He knows this well.

 

In addition, Speck has a great sense of spatial awareness. He has some form of mental map. There is one particular corner where he pricked his feet on something twice in two days. Now, whenever we go by that corner (5+ times a week) he pulls to one side to avoid the offending location. Or if there is a chicken bone on the ground (which in the area of the city we live is often) he will remember that location and every time we pass by he will try and get it.

 

But does he remember yesterday? When it is a hot summer day and he is out on a walk and he is panting hard, is he thinking and anticipating winter?

 

I don't know. He's a smart dog. He has taught us his own very basic language (yes, no, leave me alone, hungry, I gotta pee really badly, etc). He also knows hundreds of English words and phrases but I have no idea whether he remembers yesterday as a distinct series of events."

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