Forma o materiale? La generalizzazione degli oggetti nei cani di razza Border Collie

There is extensive knowledge on how human infants learn new words and categorize objects into groups based on their perceptual features relying on “shape bias”, a cognitive phenomenon that plays a significant role in early word learning. However, little is known about how dogs generalize a trained object to other ones that vary in some of their characteristics. This study aimed to assess which physical features 16 typical Border Collie dogs rely on when they have to generalize the properties of an object. Objects of three different textures (velcro, duct tape, swimming foam) and shapes (rectangular, L- shaped angle, cylinder) were prepared. Prior to the test, the subjects underwent training to retrieve the target object by repeating an English nonsense word for the target object. During the testing phase, the dogs were presented with a two-way choice situation displaying a unique pair of object combinations, including objects differing from the trained one either in shape or texture and their behaviour was observed. The results indicate that typical Border Collie dogs rely more on texture than shape to generalize the properties of a target object they have been trained to fetch. The findings of the present study suggest that, contrary to human infants, dogs appear to prioritize texture over shape when recognizing objects. The outcome of this investigation could offer insights into the analogies and differences between typical dogs and “Gifted Word Learner” dogs, potentially helping to clarify the relationship between acquiring verbal labels and the mental representation of objects.