Chaser
Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows 1000 Words
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- ¥1,100
発行者による作品情報
Chaser has a way with words. She knows over a thousand of them—more than any other animal of any species except humans. In addition to common nouns like house, ball, and tree, she has memorized the names of more than one thousand toys and can retrieve any of them on command. Based on that learning, she and her owner and trainer, retired psychologist John Pilley, have moved on to further impressive feats, demonstrating her ability to understand sentences with multiple elements of grammar and to learn new behaviors by imitation.
John’s ingenuity and tenacity as a researcher are as impressive as Chaser’s accomplishments. His groundbreaking approach has opened the door to a new understanding of animal intelligence, one that requires us to reconsider what actually goes on in a dog’s mind. Chaser’s achievements reveal her use of deductive reasoning and complex problem-solving skills to address novel challenges.
Yet astonishingly, Chaser isn’t unique. John’s training methods can be adopted by any dog lover. Through the poignant story of how he trained Chaser, raised her as a member of the Pilley family, and proved her abilities to the scientific community, he reveals the positive impact of incorporating learning into play and more effectively channeling a dog’s natural drives.
John’s work with Chaser offers a fresh perspective on what’s possible in the relationship between a dog and a human. His story points us toward a new way of relating to our canine companions that takes into account our evolving understanding of the way animals and humans learn.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Retired psychology professor Pilley's work with his border collie, Chaser, since 2004 is impressive, and his findings have been published in the journal Behavioural Processes. Challenging the bounds of animal knowledge, Chaser has "learned and retained the proper noun names of 1,022 objects over a period of three years"; the dog remembers more words than any other (nonhuman) animal known. Her achievements have made her a national celebrity, and she's made appearances on the Today show and ABC News. Here, Pilley (and coauthor Hinzmann) effectively describes his family's relationship with Chaser and the theory behind how she was taught such a large vocabulary. His findings have broader implications: the coauthors link the teaching methods developed for Chaser to the controversy about "teaching to the test" for children. Though there are occasional hiccups in the book, such as Pilley's effusiveness regarding his meeting with news anchor Diane Sawyer, Chaser's remarkable abilities speak for themselves. One 8-page b&w insert.
