Studies on the visual acuity and numerical cognition in dogs using an operant conditioning method

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Tow female and a male Shiba breed dogs were used. The dogs were trained to discriminate between a Landolt ring and an ordinary ring of equal size associated with feed. The left and right positions of the two targets were shifted according to the Gellermann series. The dogs were subjected daily to one or two sessions which consisted of 30 trials each. The criterion of successful discrimination was three consecutive sessions with more than 21 correct choices(P<0.05, Chi-square test). At first, the dogs were trained to learn the relationship between a positive target(ordinary ring) and a reward. In the following training, the dogs were trained to discriminate between both rings at a distance of 1.8 m, which corresponds to a visual acuity score of 0.01. After the dogs were fully trained, their visual acuity was determined by changing the size of the rings or the distance from the target. The best scores of visual acuity for three dogs were 0.33, 0.24 and 0.23, respectively. The score is slightly better than the results of some other farm animals.For female Shiba breed dogs were trained to discriminate between two panels on which different number of dots were drawn. Each panel was selected from 30 different patterns of panels with the same number of dots. The number of trials in each session and the criterion of successful discrimination were the same as the visual acuity test. The results of this study shows that dogs can recognize up to seven or eight.No significant correlations between learning process and heart rate were observed in dogs. However, heart rate was affected by some activities such as "switch press", "baaing" and "standing". Therefore, it was suggested that these activities might be reflected the emotional level of dogs in learning process.