My Honor Student Just Bit Your Honor Student

(My intention is to post here on Wednesdays, but this is going to be a nutty week, so here goes.)

"That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." If you're a fan of Garrison Keillor and "A Prairie Home Companion" like I am, you've heard that wrap up to the "news" many times.

Based on recent reports about Dr. Stanley Coren, you may be convinced it's time to update that line to something like "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are at least as smart as the dogs."

Dr. Coren, author of How Dogs Think and The Intelligence of Dogs (among other titles) presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in Toronto this year and the headlines flew: "Your dog is as smart as your two year old," "Poodles may be smarter than two-year-olds," "Is your dog smarter than a two-year-old child?" and my personal favorite " DOGS 'ARE BRIGHT AS TODDLERS' " (emphasis theirs.)

Let's take a peek beyond the sensationalism and hyperbole and see what Dr.Coren really had to say. Unfortunately none of the articles point to any studies or video, but between the various articles and this very recent blog post on Dr. Coren's blog at Psychology Today, I think I have cut through the hype.

Dr. Coren categorizes intelligence into three "dimensions": instinctive, adaptive, and "working and obedience." He covers them in the blog entry linked above, so I will only cover them briefly here.

Instinctive intelligence refers to what a dog was bred for. Herding dogs were bred to herd, which requires instinctive abilities that are not taught. Similarly, retrievers fetch, hounds track, pointers sniff out birds. These abilities are not useful in comparing a dog's intelligence - she either has them or she does not.

Adaptive Intelligence is the dog's ability to learn for herself. Adapting to the environment, solving problems, and applying experience are what this "dimension" consists of. This is measurable between two dogs, whether they are of the same breed or not.

Working and Obedience Intelligence is probably what most people are thinking of when they discuss the relative intelligence of an individual dog: how "trainable" she is. In his blog Dr. Coren refers to the research he did for the Intelligence of Dogs, which this part of the breathless reporting concerning dogs and their less intelligent human toddlers is actually covering research done for a book published four years ago.

Dr. Coren's ranking of breeds by working and obedience intelligence is probably what he is best known for, at least in the "civilian" word. But all it really is a great headline material for a slow news day (and keep in mind, all 3 of my dogs are mixes from the top 10, so it's not sour grapes speaking here.) Even he admits it may be poor criteria for selecting a dog, since learning things quickly means that your dog may quickly learn a few things you don't want her to. I would add that of the bottom ten breeds, I have had quite a few representatives of eight in obedience classes and they all did fine.

Personally, I'm a little confused about the difference between adaptive and working/obedience. Learning what a human wants when she issues a given cue is, to a large degree, adapting to the environment, isn't it? Isn't there at least some overlap between these two "dimensions" of intelligence? I posted this question to Dr. Coren's blog.

Most of the articles also indicate that the "average dog" can understand about 165 words and count to 5. A few of the articles also refer to dogs showing an ability to deceive other dogs and people.

Dr. Coren discusses deception in both "How Dogs Think" and "The Intelligence of Dogs." Deception requires a very sophisticated level of thought. In order to deceive you, I don't just have to figure how to fool you - I have to somehow recognize that you have a mind and can see things differently than I, I.E. that you can be fooled. Dr. Coren discusses this in both books, and it's the discussions like this that make both books well worth reading.

The assertions regarding vocabularly are not a surprise to me at all. You may recall stories about Rico, a Border Collie in Germany with a 200+ word vocabulary that has been verified by a handful of researchers. Dr. Coren discusses Rico in The Intelligence of Dogs.

And, as you might have guessed, Dr. Coren also discusses counting in his book, although I think the examples he cites, such as the dog that retrieves multiple hunting lures, could be explained by the dog using scent or picking up cues from his handler. I'm not convinced dogs can count, but I'm not saying it's impossible either.

So, it appears that the big story a couple of weeks ago was not new data regarding the intelligence of dogs, but perhaps the relative lack on the part of toddlers? (Just kidding parents! I have a child of my own, and he was just awarded a full scholarship for fours years of undergrad, thank you very much.)

The real news I have seen regarding the intelligence of dogs is here, courtesy of Patricia McConnell. Dog's riding the subway between "home" and where they find food? There's an amazing example of adaptive learning.

What do you think?