Woman Uses Lockdown to Teach Her Clever Dog Math And Colors With Homemade Flash Cards

[Michie]

Meet the clever dog that can count to ten, answer questions and even solve addition problems—in English and Japanese.

SWNS

Monica Elkhalifa taught her six-year-old Shiba Inu new tricks when he became impossible to entertain with just long walks and toys.

Now when shown a number of different flashcards featuring colors, numbers and shapes Akira can choose the one that matches Monica’s question.


With a tap of his paw Akira—who knows more than 90 words—can also do simple addition problems by pointing to the card with the correct answer. (See the video below.)

Akira can even apparently add up the number of drawings on a card, such as three apples—and select the number card which matches—and answer yes/no questions too.

“I just thought it would be fun to teach him a few numbers—just an exercise to keep him busy. I was overjoyed when he learned the number four. After that, he quickly learned five to ten and as he mastered each stage or level, I had to develop new ideas to keep him mentally active and build on the earlier lessons.

Continued below.
Woman Uses Lockdown to Teach Her Clever Dog Math And Colors With Homemade Flash Cards

 

[Occams Barber]

Meet the clever dog that can count to ten, answer questions and even solve addition problems—in English and Japanese.

SWNS

Monica Elkhalifa taught her six-year-old Shiba Inu new tricks when he became impossible to entertain with just long walks and toys.

Now when shown a number of different flashcards featuring colors, numbers and shapes Akira can choose the one that matches Monica’s question.


With a tap of his paw Akira—who knows more than 90 words—can also do simple addition problems by pointing to the card with the correct answer. (See the video below.)

Akira can even apparently add up the number of drawings on a card, such as three apples—and select the number card which matches—and answer yes/no questions too.

“I just thought it would be fun to teach him a few numbers—just an exercise to keep him busy. I was overjoyed when he learned the number four. After that, he quickly learned five to ten and as he mastered each stage or level, I had to develop new ideas to keep him mentally active and build on the earlier lessons.

Continued below.
Woman Uses Lockdown to Teach Her Clever Dog Math And Colors With Homemade Flash Cards

There's a phenomenon known as the Clever Hans Effect named after a horse which performed similar tricks back in the early 1900s. The horse was shown to be reading body language. This sounds similar, particularly when you see the dog responding before the question is finished.

From Wikipedia

Clever Hans (German: der Kluge Hans; fl. 1907) was a horse that was claimed to have performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reactions of his trainer. He discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.[1] In honour of Pfungst's study, the anomalous artifact has since been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in the observer-expectancy effect and later studies in animal cognition.

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