Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2020 Jun 26;10(1):10449. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-67302-0.
We investigated whether dogs remember their spontaneous past actions relying on episodic-like memory. Dogs were trained to repeat a small set of actions upon request. Then we tested them on their ability to repeat other actions produced by themselves, including actions performed spontaneously in everyday situations. Dogs repeated their own actions after delays ranging from a few seconds to 1 hour, with their performance showing a decay typical of episodic memory. The combined evidence of representing own actions and using episodic-like memory to recall them suggests a far more complex representation of a key feature of the self than previously attributed to dogs. Our method is applicable to various species, paving the way for comparative investigations on the evolution and complexity of self-representation.
我们研究了狗是否依靠情景记忆来回忆它们自发的过去行为。狗被训练在收到请求时重复一小组动作。然后，我们测试它们重复自己做出的其他动作的能力，包括在日常情况下自发做出的动作。狗在几秒钟到 1 小时的延迟后重复自己的动作，它们的表现呈现出与情景记忆典型的衰退。代表自己的动作并使用情景记忆来回忆它们的综合证据表明，自我的一个关键特征的代表比以前归因于狗的要复杂得多。我们的方法适用于各种物种，为比较自我表现的进化和复杂性的研究铺平了道路。
