Accepted Manuscript

9 Despite evidence that dogs are skilful in acquiring information socially from humans and are 10 able to copy the actions of a human demonstrator, formal dog-training methods have 11 traditionally relied only on individual learning (operant and classical conditioning). We 12 compared the efficiency of the ‘Do as I do’ method (Topál et al. 2006), which relies on social 13 learning, with that of a training method that relies on individual learning (shaping/clicker 14 training Skinner 1951) to teach dogs three different kinds of object-related actions. In order 15 to control for the comparability of the previous training experiences of our subjects, we tested 16 experienced dog-owner dyads that had previously achieved a certificate for either type of 17 training (Do as I do and shaping/clicker training). They were tested upon training three 18 different novel actions: simple, complex and sequences of two actions, in three separate 19 sessions, using the training method they were certified for. In each case the owners had 15 20 minutes for accomplishing the task of training the dogs to perform the predetermined action. 21 We used the latency of first occurrence and the number of dyads that were successful within 22 15 minutes as measures of training success. While we did not find a significant difference 23 between the two training methods with regard to simple actions, we found that subjects using 24 the Do as I do method outperformed those using shaping/clicker training in the case of 25 complex actions and sequences of two actions. This study is the first to formalize a method 26 based on the Do as I do protocol for training dogs and to assess its efficiency by comparing it 27 with shaping/clicker training. We acknowledge that many factors can influence the success of 28 different training paradigms, however, these results provide new insights for the applied dog 29 training techniques by suggesting the usefulness of social learning in addition to the widely 30 used methods that rely on individual associative learning. 31