Today@Dal

Dr. Sophie Jacques and her students are looking for dogs of any age, breed, and ability to participate in a research study on whether dogs' abilities to find hidden objects are predicted by their understanding of spoken words, as is the case in human infants and young children.

To study this in dogs, we will get dogs to search for hidden rewards in a series of search games. Dogs' understanding of English words will also be assessed. To do this, owners will be asked to complete a short survey. In the survey, we ask owners about their dog's history, daily life and level of training, andwe ask them to check off words/phrases to which their dog responds. We also ask about some general household information to get a sense of the amount of language to which dogs may be exposed and to be able to summarize our participants in our written reports.

The survey currently only exists in English, so do not have the right tools to assess word understanding in dogs who know more than one language or in dogs who know a language other than English. As a result, we are recruiting dog owners with dogs who only know English to participate.

The study takes about 30-45 minutes to complete. If you have a dog who knows only English and would be interested in more information about this study, please contact us at 902 494-8055 or sophie.jacques@dal.ca