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.
I’m not sure I buy this. I’d agree that their memory is much lower than humans, but my experience with dogs is that they do remember negative episodes.
When I first got my previous dog, a choc lab, we went for a walk. She was still quite young and we walked past a parked school bus. Right when we were by the rear wheel, the air brakes let loose and scared that poor puppy nearly to death! For the rest of her life, she was scared to death of school busses! Not all busses, just school busses!
Now I have an adopted coon hound and he reacts very aggressively to men wearing carhart coats! I suspect that his previous experiences haven’t been nso great with men wearing carhart!
That said, I do agree that they only remember the most traumatic episodes! I suspect that they “don’t sweat the small stuff, unless it is about bits of food.”
;-)
All the dogs I used to own would learn what the sight and jingle sound of a walking leash meant to them. It was time to go out! Just like people, most dogs have very good memories for negative events; such as a particular person who always yells at them, or treats them with cruelty, or a particular tone of voice you have when it’s time to give them a bath.
The moment I used to put my dogs on a Vet’s exam table, they start trembling, expecting to get a shot after all the obligatory petting. I’ve seen dogs become traumatized by prior events, such as being attacked by other dogs, so the dog in question no longer wants to go down that street, even on a leash with their master.
I call BS on this too. My dogs remember a lot of things. They remember when I go out a door that I will come back in that same door, they are waiting for me there. When my chair makes a squeak, they know I am getting up, when this happens at night, they know I am going to bed and they are already ahead of me going down I the hall. When I put on my yellow plastic apron they know they are going to get a bath and I can see them hang their heads. One of them even knows the word “bath” so i am careful not to say it or she will hide from me. I think this guy has some dumb dogs.
My dogs know exactly what time dinner occurs, within minutes. Horses, cats, goats, and cattle do as well. Only the switch to daylight savings time trips them up. Don't mess with dinner time.
I had a Cocker that did that, and if they moved to a different tree the next time he would skip the first and go to the different one.
Hmm, then why after every walk does my Basset Hound sit in front of the refrigerator waiting for a snack? Or when I say ‘lets go take a walk’ he knows where the leash is and goes and stands under it, and it can be in one of several placces.
Oh, and don’t try and hide snacks from a Basset Hound.
yeah. the part about memory...this story is BS in my not-so-humble opinion
Try always returning by another door on alternate days. It’s a simple pattern that we would eventually grasp, but do you think they would catch on?
On the other hand, I’m not sure I understand the difference between abstract memory and memory association. I mean it’s obvious that dogs have memory for association.
Freegards
My basset, Georgie, hid a milk bone dog biscuit when we were packing the car to visit in laws for 2 weeks. We took our dogs with us and when we returned, I opened the door to let the dogs into the house and Georgie immediately ran upstairs to get the biscuit he hid in my husband’s shoe.
They remember.
Sure, but that’s classical conditioning, e.g. a reinforcement is given for a behavior causing the frequency of that behavior to increase. And dogs have very keen noses, so they can easily follow those scent clues that are invisible to us. Amazing animals, but their memory is based on experience rather than reasoning.
The more I am around people the more I love my dog!! (black Lab rescue)
LOL, just like my buddy Schultz.
Get rea-day to rummmmmblllleeee! ;’)
We took our Golden Retriever up the road to a pond on a trip to the mountains.He dove in and chased sticks for an hour with a happy face on.We left to go home a week later.
The following YEAR, we went back to the same house and Charlie leapt out of the car as soon as a door was opened, raced up the road and jumped in the pond, waiting.
No memory?
I am amazed what my dog remembers. Brought home a company vehicle that he had never never seen one day and he was ready to repel the invader until I got out. Two weeks later I brought it home again and he knew it was me.
We have an underground “invisible” fence. We let the dogs out occasionally without collars and they remember exactly where the boundary is, even chasing the crack-like fix of a tennis ball.
Your example is one that actually contradicts the study findings, unlike some of the others here. The study’s point is that dogs can learn from experience, but cannot access specific memories— in particular of the events leading to the learned behavior. I’ve got another, my dog sees/finds a particular animal (racoon, possum, injured bird) in the yard in early evening when I put her out. The next morning, she remembers this particular episode and eagerly waits to go outside, and then races out to that exact spot to see if they are still there. When they are not, she realizes the animal has gone and does not try to do this again. Another example, I put my dogs favorite bone/toy out of reach/sight/smell because she won’t stop playing/chewing and I need sleep. She sees me, and knows where I put it. Several days later (even weeks) she will remember and suddenly remind me by looking at that spot and crying- even though i myself have long since forgotten... lol. They do indeed remember, and have some ability to access those memories.
“But dogs (and other non-human animals) are missing something we take for granted: episodic memory. Dogs don’t remember what happened yesterday ....”
BS! No one fully understand what goes on in a dog’s mind. No doubt, dogs think differently than humans. Dogs must have some degree of self-awareness to have survival instincts, even if they don’t recognize themselves in a mirror. Their concept of time is probably different than ours, but my dogs know within minutes what time it is, whether to get up or to be fed.
Dogs sure enough do have long memories. On one occasion walking my girl around the block, she was freaked out by people atop a house, banging away on new shingles. ‘Taint natural, the terrified dog thought, as she struggled to get away. She was afraid to approach that house for the next six months. No memory, phooey!
Same with the laundry. If I went in to do laundry, he would sit outside the doorway behind me and start getting a little anxious. So I would step out for a minute to give him that window of opportunity and he would go in to the pile and get his treat and run off to another room. He didn't have to sniff them out. He knew right where he stashed them.
I also kept his frisbees in a backpack in the closet by the front door. The moment I opened that closet door, he was at my side waiting for me to pull it off the shelf. He did not wait to see the frisbees and sometimes he was disappointed to see that I was merely getting a coat. But he knew that's where his frisbees were and each time he lobbied his hardest to sway me into taking him out for his favorite game.
But thinking about all this, how would "experts" explain dog's dreaming? Isn't there memory at work while dreaming?
My parents had a Cock a poo years ago. There were three different roads that we could take to get there. When we got to within a mile, it didn't matter which road that dog jumped up and barked an wagged his tail.
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