A study of the intelligence of dogs gave interesting results.

In an article published in the journal Intelligence,psychologists Rosalind Arden and Mark Adams come to the conclusion that a dog that shows good results in a single acuity test, as a rule, shows itself well in other intellectual tests. According to scientists, in dogs there is a general indicator of mental abilities - the so-called g-factor.

For their research, Arden and Adams developeda series of cognitive tests for dogs. All tasks were built according to the “right answer - reward” scheme. For example, in one of the tests the dog had to find the right path among the obstacles in order to get to the treat. In another experiment, the dog was asked to point out one of the inverted glasses, under which, according to the animal, was supposed to be a delicacy. Perhaps the most curious was the test, during which the dog had to choose between a small prize (a piece of peanut butter) and a large reward, available only with the correct solution of the problem.

The study involved 68 border collie from Wales. All of them were trained to work on a livestock farm, which, by the way, requires considerable ingenuity.

All dogs showed different results - onepassed the test easily, others - faced with difficulties. The labyrinth test turned out to be especially difficult for some animals. During this test, the dog was supposed to crawl along a plastic pipe, at the end of which was a treat. While the dog leaders spent only 3 seconds to complete this task, it took up to two minutes for lagging behind.

As it turned out, the results of the same dogduring the passage of various texts strongly correlate with each other, which confirms the existence of the g-factor. For example, animals that successfully solved the peanut butter test usually completed the labyrinth easily.

According to the authors of the study, the patternsbinding differences in intellectual abilities are common to different animals. In earlier studies, the g-factor was found in mice, monkeys and even insects. Perhaps, the results of such studies will someday be distributed to a person, for it is not by chance that they say "a talented person is talented in everything."