By Claudia Bensimoun
First published: The United States Dog Agility Association (USDAA)
Updated in 2025 from the original 2019 publication.
A study shows that attentional changes in a dog’s life mirror those in humans.
When is your pup ready to learn? This USDAA feature by Claudia Bensimoun in barkuptoday.com reveals that dog attentiveness peaks in mid-adulthood (3-6 years), with adolescent dogs (1-2 years) showing the steepest learning curve, according to a study by Vetmeduni Vienna of 145 border collies.
Social attentiveness (watching humans) outpaces non-social attentiveness (watching objects), and older dogs tend to exhibit calmness. From habituation to selective attention, it offers practical tips for agility training. Below are key highlights from the article, including implications for puppy learning and trainability. Read the full feature on USDAA.com here.
To learn successfully, dogs, like humans, require a certain level of concentration and attention. Similarly, dogs, like humans, exhibit varying levels of attentiveness throughout their lives, according to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Dr. Lisa Wallis at the Messerli Research Institute, Vetmeduni, Vienna, and her colleagues employed a cross-sectional study design to investigate changes in attention (peak and decline) throughout a dog’s life. They concluded that dogs’ attentional and sensorimotor control developmental trajectories are very similar to those found in humans. The research involved 145 border collies, aged 6 months to 14 years, at the Clever Dog Lab, Vetmeduni Institute, Vienna. Only those dogs that willingly cooperated were involved in the study.
Dogs Found Humans More Interesting Than Objects
Wallis wanted to determine how rapidly dogs of different ages pay attention to objects or people. In the first test, the dogs were confronted with a child’s toy that was suddenly suspended from the ceiling.
Wallis and her colleagues then measured how quickly each dog reacted to this occurrence, and also how rapidly the dogs became accustomed to it. At the beginning of testing, all the dogs responded to the stimulus (the child’s toy) at a similar speed. But the older dogs lost interest in the toy more quickly than the younger dogs did.
In the second test, a person who was familiar with the dog being tested entered the room and pretended to paint the wall. Surprisingly, all the dogs reacted together. The dogs watched the person and the paint roller in the painter’s hand for a much longer time than they watched the toy hanging from the ceiling.
“So-called ‘social attentiveness’ was more pronounced in all dogs than ‘non-social’ attentiveness. The dogs generally tended to watch the person with the object longer than they did when watching an object on its own. We found that older dogs, like older humans, demonstrated a certain calmness. They were less affected by new items in the environment and thus showed less interest than younger dogs,” says Wallis on sciencedaily.com*.
Selective Attention Is Highest in Mid-Adulthood
In another test, Wallis and colleagues explored so-called selective attention. The dogs first had to participate in an alternating attention task. In this test, the dogs were required to perform two tasks consecutively. In the first test, the dogs had to find a food reward that the experimenter had thrown on the floor.
After the dogs ate the food, the experimenter would then wait for the dog to establish eye contact with her. These tasks were repeated for 20 trials. Each time there was eye contact, a clicker would make a clicking sound, and the dog was then rewarded with hot dog bits.
The researchers then timed how long it took for the dog to find the food and look up at the experimenter’s face. By comparing both time spans, middle-aged dogs, specifically those between three and six years old, reacted more rapidly. Under these testing conditions, sensorimotor abilities were found to be highest in middle-aged dogs.
Younger dogs did not perform as well, most likely due to their limited experience. Researchers have also found that motor abilities in dogs, like those in humans, deteriorate with advanced age. “Humans that were between the ages of 20 and 39 years old experience a similar peak in sensorimotor abilities,” says Wallis.
Adolescent Dogs Have the Steepest Learning Curve
Wallis explained that dogs also undergo a difficult phase during adolescence, typically between one and two years of age. This affects their ability to pay attention. The researchers compared this phase to puberty in humans. Not surprisingly, young dogs sometimes reacted to the clicker test with a delay.
Nonetheless, Wallis concluded that young adolescent dogs improved their performance more rapidly than any other age group after having made several repetitions of the clicker test. That is, the learning curve in adolescent dogs was found to be steepest during puberty. “Thus, dogs in puberty have great potential for learning and therefore trainability,” explains Wallis.
Dogs Serve as a Model for ADHD and Alzheimer’s Disease Studies
Since the development of attentiveness in a dog’s lifespan is similar to that of human development in many ways, dogs make suitable animal models for many psychological disorders in humans. ADHD and Alzheimer’s can be studied by observing canine behavior. In another recent project, Wallis studied the effects of diet on cognition in older dogs, together with Dr. Durga Chapagain.
*All quotes from Dr. Wallis were posted on sciencedaily.com.
Claudia Bensimoun, Dog Attentiveness, Puppy Learning Curve, Canine Social Attentiveness, USDAA Agility Training, Dog Behavior Science, Selective Attention Dogs, Adolescent Dog Learning, Canine Sensorimotor Abilities, Dog Training Tips, Vet Training Insights, Dog Agility Wellness, Canine Cognition, Pet Learning Potential, Border Collie Study
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Links:
https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/messerli/science/cognition/canines/dogs-clever-dog-lab/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140401102245.htm