Mystery solved:
Smart dog.
Posted on 03/02/2015 10:55:47 AM PST by Red Badger
Dogs Don't Remember: Episodic Memory May Distinguish Humans
Dogs are wonderful creatures. Our dogs recognize me and are always happy to see me. Dogs are also smart and successful creatures. Our dogs have learned several cute tricks. But dogs (and other non-human animals) are missing something we take for granted: episodic memory. Dogs don't remember what happened yesterday and don't plan for tomorrow.
In defining episodic memory, Endel Tulving argued that it is unique to humans. Experience influences all animals. Most mammals and birds can build complex sets of knowledge or semantic memory. You and I also remember the experience of learning these complex sets of information. Dogs don't.
Episodic remembering is mental time travel and depends on a few crucial cognitive capabilities. First, in order to experience episodic remembering, an individual must have a sense of self. Most non-human animals have a dramatically different experience of self than we do. For example, most animals (and young humans) fail to identify themselves in mirrors. If I look in a mirror and see that I have something stuck between my teeth, I try to correct the problem. (I also wonder why my friends didn't tell me I had something stuck between my teeth.) In contrast, put a red dot on a child's forehead, put the child in front of a mirror, and watch what happens. Young children are more likely to reach for the baby in the mirror than for their own foreheads. Dogs treat the dog in the mirror as another dog; not as themselves. Most animals fail at the red dot mirror task.
A self concept is not, however, enough to ensure episodic remembering. Mental time travel is the other critical cognitive capability. I understand that yesterday is different from today and that tomorrow will be different as well. We realize that when we remember, the mental experience is a disjointed slice of time. Thus episodic remembering is the combination of a self concept and mental time travel: recollecting the self in that other time period. Mental time travel also enables planning for the future. Dogs don't plan for particular future events although they have a general expectation of when dinner will appear.
Tulving also argued that since episodic memory in a recent evolutionary development, it is particularly likely to suffer damage and loss. Anterograde amnesia is the failure to encode and remember new episodic memories. Anterograde amnesiacs can learn from single experiences without recollecting the experience. They retain a clear sense of self, but they have difficulty with time as personally experienced. Because they lack episodic memory, they can't recall what occurred just before the present moment and constantly feel like they just woke up. If you meet an anterograde amnesiac, leave the room, and return after 10 minutes, you'll remember having met the individual, but the amnesiac won't remember having met you.
My dogs display this particular failure of episodic remembering. If I walk into the backyard, the dogs are overjoyed to see me and act like they haven't seen me for days. If I stay in the backyard, they quickly become bored with me. If I go inside and return after 10-15 minutes, my dogs are overjoyed to see me and act like they haven't seen me in days. They don't remember that I was in the backyard just a few minutes ago.
Arguing against Tulving's notion that episodic remembering is unique to humans is hard. Showing the impact of a single experience is not enough. Even without episodic memory, humans can show the impact of single events. Anterograde amnesiacs can learn fear, learn new skills, and gain new conceptual knowledge. Normal humans also gain knowledge without remembering when and where they learned the information (see my earlier post on Haven't I Seen You Somewhere Before).
Although I appreciate Tulving's conception of episodic memory, I've always been troubled by the difficulty of documenting that other animals have episodic memory. Episodic remembering hinges on the conscious experience of the self in some other time and place. Episodic memory is thus hard to demonstrate without the verbal ability to describe conscious experience.
Nonetheless, in a recent edited volume (The Missing Link in Cognition: Origins of Self Reflective Consciousness, edited by Terrance and Metcalf), several individuals have taken up the challenge. In my next post, I'll present the counter-argument: Dogs don't remember, but maybe chimps do. Since some non-human primates can perform self recognition with mirrors, they may perform episodic remembering. Even if they can't describe their memories, chimps may engage in mental time travel. My dogs, however, are stuck in an eternal present.
Ira E. Hyman, Jr., Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at Western Washington University.
Our late, great cocker spaniel Chelsea had once been mistreated by a gas station attendant. (Remember those?) Consequently, she went berserk whenever time we approached a gas station. Maybe it was the smell of gasoline that triggered the association. She must have been a descendant of Pavlov’s dog.
I’ve had the same thing happen to me.
I’ve had the same thing happen to me.
“Dogs don’t remember what happened yesterday and don’t plan for tomorrow.”
Ah, so Cesar Milan agrees: “dogs only live in the present”. He sees it as they don’t care; scientists see it as they don’t remember specific things from the past.
It is a specific kind of memory he is discussing.
And you are talking about, Georgie, who taught himself to push a dining room chair into the kitchen so he could easily climb onto the counterinsurgency and clear them of all available bread, marinating meats and sweets!
Dadgum dog taught himself how to create a tool!
You need to read the article.
The man references his dogs almost immediately and through the whole thing.
Never mind all the comments about them having memory - it is SPECIFIC memory type discussed.
And furthermore, I volunteer George’s services to prove that dogs DO remember.
Payyment will be a slice of turkey shredded on breakfast and dinner and a pig ear, cut into 4 pieces to be spread out during the day.
And a belly rub.
Anyone who has rescued abused dogs would call this BS.
I’ve had dogs who had the canine form of PTSD.
They remembered all their yesterdays, alright.
There has been a deluge of anti-dog propaganda, of late.
This, to me, goes hand in hand with the all the pro-Islam drivel.
Our dogs are part of their conquest agenda.
My Ibizan Hound stands on the arm of the sofa and obnoxiously admires herself in the mirror on the wall adjacent.
She poses, wags her tail and then barks at me to see if I’m watching this vulgar display of vanity.
OTOH, Seven, the Dobe, saw her reflection the first time in a PetCo bathroom mirror.
She went ballistic over that “other dog” who was standing so perilously near me.
When I touched the mirror dog’s head and then hers, she stopped barking and “high fived” the dog in the mirror, instead.
This article is rubbish.
Horse hockey! My little dog still sits at the edge of the deck waiting for his mentor to come home, even though we put her down 9 years ago. He also looks for his two proteges, though they’ve been gone for 3 years.
He also pines for the kitty, too.
Baloney and hogwash dogs don’t remember. How else could we train them, FCOL?
I know my dogs are smarter than my snakes and even they seem to have a sense of time and anticipation.
For 8 months, I fed them all on Friday night.
When summer came and I was out on the bike all weekend, I switched their dinner night to Sunday.
Years later, every Friday, without fail, they all get up and roam their enclosures, expecting to be fed.
At first I thought they were just reacting to the smell of their chow being thawed but after several months of *nothing* being thawed and no familiar movements on Friday, it became apparent that they “learned Friday” and somehow managed to “tell time” or “count days”.
I have no idea how but I see it every week.
The snakes I got *after* the initial Friday night schedule get up and start to eagerly roam early Sunday morning, waiting for the evening when they actually do eat.
And snakes are not nearly as smart as dogs.
Your story is very touching.
Maybe he smelled them?
I don’t think he’s ever been anywhere near a dog in his whole life.
Was thinking the same thing.
I had a dog that needed to be trained to use a little foot stool to get on my bed. It took time but finally she remembered - jump on foot stool then you can jump on the bed.
When I shake the bag of treats my fog knew what it was and freaked out accordingly. She remembered, didn’t she?
BS, they just don’t remember what does not matter.
Mine is 11 months old. She has not figured out guilt yet. LOL, She’s rarely alone. We don’t trust the cats or her to get along.
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