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- Chaser the Border Collie was able to recognize over a thousand nouns.- When asked to bring a toy out of the thousand she had, she was able to identify the specific toy by its name, and could identify things by categories.

- Chaser was gifted to Dr Pilley on his 76th birthday.

- When Chaser was only 2 months old, Dr Pilley began his journey with her.

- Dr Pilley used a method known as errorless learning

- By the end of Chasers fifth month, she had already learned 40 words and she kept them in her long term memory.

- By studying Chaser, new knowledge was gained on animals' language skills.

Abbie Mood, “Remembering Chaser, the “Smartest dog in the world””, American Kennel Club, 05 August 2019

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Watching from 3:10-6:00 minutes

In this video you can see Chaser in action!

It also demonstrates her ability to learn  words via exclusion, as shown in Experiment 4

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Chaser the Dog Shows Off Her Smarts to Neil deGrasse Tyson

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-Investigate the ability for a border collie to learn proper nouns
-Began at 8 weeks old
-Obedience and socialization training
-Classical and operant conditioning, and associative learning
-Local 8-of-8 test
-Monthly random test
-After 3 years: 1022 proper nouns

John W. Pilley, Alliston K. Reid,
"Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents." Behavioural Processes, Volume 86, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 184-195, ISSN 0376-6357,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007.

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-Researchers wanted to confirm that words Chaser was learning conveyed more than just "reference"
-In 14 trials, they presented her with different combinations of 3 commands and 3 objects.The objects had never been paired with these commands before.
- Objects: Lamb, ABC, Lips
-Commands: Paw, take, nose
-The Experiment: The experimenter gave Chaser commands from behind a cloth, while a confederate observed and gave a signal when Chaser had finished her response. Then, 3 raters were chosen to watch the video and rate her completion of the task.
-Result: Chaser was rated 100% for all trials. By successfully recombining the commands and objects, she proved her ability to understand that nouns refer to objects independent of the actions directed towards the object. '

John W. Pilley, Alliston K. Reid,
"Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents." Behavioural Processes, Volume 86, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 184-195, ISSN 0376-6357,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007.

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-Experiment 3 focuses on learning and comprehension of Common nouns and there relation to proper nouns.
-Chaser's is tested on her ability to categorize previously learned proper nouns into three specific common nouns.
All of which can be classified into the three common nouns listed below in which she was taught in experiments 3.
common nouns
-Toy (1022)
-Ball (116)
-Frisbee (26)
-Chaser was taught these nouns the same way she was taught proper nouns in experiment 1
-Generalization and Discriminations training
-Common noun comprehension testing.
- Noun Object mapping : maps up to three labels
-Chaser successfully demonstrates that words can represent categories.
- Chaser's ability to demonstrate noun object mapping and its connection to words (labels) helps the further understanding of border collies

John W. Pilley, Alliston K. Reid,
"Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents." Behavioural Processes, Volume 86, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 184-195, ISSN 0376-6357,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007.

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Experiment 4 demonstrated chasers ability to understand words using the process of elimination, as a result her response wouldn't be based on association.

First test: Researchers need to test that she wasn't drawn to the new toys because of their unfamiliarity
- Mixed 2 new toys, and 6 familiar toys in a room
- she retrieved them without interacting with the other toys, eliminating that possibility

Second Test: Learning New words by exclusion
-1 new object was placed among 7 familiar toys.
- Chaser was told to retrieve 2 familiar toys, then the new object
- she needed extra encouragement in trials 1 and 2, but for the next 6 she was successful.

Third Test: Retention
-one newly named object placed among 3 new and 4 familiar toys
- her retention went dow with time
- immediately after the first experiment, she was able to retrieve all newly named objects
- after. 10 minutes, she retrieved 5/8 of them
- after 24 hrs, she only retrieved one of them

As learned by experiment 1, consistent practice was needed for her to retain her memory of the words.

John W. Pilley, Alliston K. Reid,
"Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents." Behavioural Processes, Volume 86, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 184-195, ISSN 0376-6357,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007.

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What this shows about Chaser's language skills

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What this shows about Chaser's language skills

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Together, these studies indicate that Chaser acquired referential understanding of nouns, an ability normally attributed to children, which included: (a) awareness that words may refer to objects, (b) awareness of verbal cues that map words upon the object referent, and (c) awareness that names may refer to unique objects or categories of objects, independent of the behaviors directed toward those objects.

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Word Search Activity Challenge!!!! Complete it in under a minute!

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Word Search Activity Challenge!!!! Complete it in under a minute!

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Click on the image below :)

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Abbie Mood, “Remembering Chaser, the “Smartest dog in the world””, American Kennel Club, 05 August 2019

John W. Pilley, Alliston K. Reid,
"Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents." Behavioural Processes, Volume 86, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 184-195, ISSN 0376-6357,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007.

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Who said you can't teach an "old" dog new tricks? A nine-year-old Border Collie, , was trained to understand the names of over 1000 objects. Recent work has discovered that Chaser was able to differentiate between the names of objects and commands to fetch them.

This new research confirms the findings of John Pilley and Alliston Reid of Wofford College, Germany who answered two major questions with their research: How large can a dog's vocabulary become if given extensive training? What do dogs actually understand when we use human language to communicate with them?

Chaser gained fame by comprehending complete sentences containing a prepositional object, verb, and direct object. "Chaser intuitively discovered how to comprehend sentences based on lots of background learning about different types of words," Dr. John Pilley, Chaser's owner and a retired psychology professor at Wofford College in South Carolina, told Science News. Pilley had previously taught Chaser to understand objects by name and to remember them.

Chaser's comprehension of sentences was tested with many familiar objects and new objects as well. Chaser was even tested when she could not see the objects at the time that she received the commands. Pilley wrote that the findings are relevant and statistically significant. "Successful findings were attributed to Chaser's intensive training in her first three years of life." Similar studies demonstrating that dogs do understand simple two-word sentences such as "pull toy" and "fetch ball" have been observed before.

So, exactly how smart are these dogs? Dr. Stanley Coren, an expert on canine intelligence, said via Huffington Post: "Roughly speaking, the average dog is equivalent to a human two-year-old in terms of mental abilities. And the 'super dogs' are equivalent to maybe a human two-and-a-half-year-old. 'Super dogs' are breeds ranked in the top 20 percent of canine intelligence. Border Collies are considered the most intelligent, followed by Poodles and German Shepherds. No matter what the breed, the key to teaching dogs to understand commands is repetitive training." He added that simple commands and consistency are also essential.

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Border Collie Comprehends Over 1,000 Object Names as Verbal Referents

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Who said you can't teach an "old" dog new tricks? A nine-year-old Border Collie, , was trained to understand the names of over 1000 objects . Recent work has discovered that Chaser was able to differentiate between the names of objects and commands to fetch them.