Abstract：
Little research has been conducted on dogs\' (Canis familiaris) ability to integrate information obtained through different sensory modalities during object discrimination and recognition tasks. Such a process would indicate the formation of multisensory mental representations. In Experiment 1, we tested the ability of 3 Gifted Word Learner (GWL) dogs that can rapidly learn the verbal labels of toys, and 10 Typical (T) dogs to discriminate an object recently associated with a reward, from distractor objects, under light and dark conditions. While the success rate did not differ between the two groups and conditions, a detailed behavioral analysis showed that all dogs searched for longer and sniffed more in the dark. This suggests that, when possible, dogs relied mostly on vision, and switched to using only other sensory modalities, including olfaction, when searching in the dark. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether, for the GWL dogs (N = 4), hearing the object verbal labels activates a memory of a multisensory mental representation. We did so by testing their ability to recognize objects based on their names under dark and light conditions. Their success rate did not differ between the two conditions, whereas the dogs\' search behavior did, indicating a flexible use of different sensory modalities. Little is known about the cognitive mechanisms involved in the ability of GWL dogs to recognize labeled objects. These findings supply the first evidence that for GWL dogs, verbal labels evoke a multisensory mental representation of the objects.
摘要：
关于狗（犬类）在物体辨别和识别任务中整合通过不同感觉方式获得的信息的能力的研究很少。这样的过程将表明多感官心理表征的形成。在实验1中，我们测试了3只天赋单词学习者（GWL）狗可以快速学习玩具的语言标签的能力，和10只典型的（T）狗区分最近与奖励相关的对象，来自干扰物，在光明和黑暗的条件下。虽然两组之间的成功率和条件没有差异，一项详细的行为分析表明，所有的狗在黑暗中搜索的时间更长，嗅闻更多。这表明,如果可能,狗主要依靠视觉，转而只使用其他感官模式，包括嗅觉,在黑暗中寻找在实验2中，我们调查了是否，对于GWL狗（N=4），听到对象的言语标签会激活对多感官心理表征的记忆。我们通过测试它们在黑暗和光照条件下根据它们的名字识别物体的能力来做到这一点。他们的成功率在两个条件之间没有差异，而狗的搜索行为，表明灵活使用不同的感觉方式。关于GWL狗识别标记物体的能力所涉及的认知机制知之甚少。这些发现为GWL狗提供了第一个证据，口头标签唤起了对象的多感官心理表征。
