Abstract
Since dogs are used for a wide variety of purposes by humans, it is very important to acquire knowledge about their perceptual and learning abilities. In this study, four dogs (Canis familiaris) were trained to "O-I-De ("come" in English)" and "Ha-U-Su ("house" in English) reliably response to recorded commands. The experimenter (trainer) sat on a chair to restrict body movements, wore black glasses to eliminate eye contact with the dog, and used recorded verbal commands presented via an equipment. Performance was low in all cases compared with the true command condition. The response score to the change of the consonant of command "O-I-De" has decreased compared with the true command. In addition, it was significantly slow at time from the presentation of the command to the completion of the response compared with the true command. A response score of command "Ha-U-Su" showed similar to "O-I-De" a tendency. Moreover, response time was compared with the true command and the consonant change command was slow. The results suggest that dogs might recognise a slight change in a Japanese command of three phonemes as well as the results of English commands.
