Cognitive Assessment for Neuropsychological Impairments in Dogs (CANID): An Efficient, Repeatable, and Sensitive Evaluation for Age-related Cognitive Dysfunction

We introduce the Cognitive Assessment for Neuropsychological Impairments in Dogs (CANID), a functional evaluation consisting of three cognitive tasks that measure aspects of memory and executive function. CANID can be implemented in a single ~ 40-minute evaluation, was designed for studies of cognitive aging in community dwelling dogs, and is sensitive to mid-life mild cognitive dysfunction. We developed a scoring system using a baseline sample (N = 239) and repeat testing at six (N = 140) and twelve (N = 118) month follow-up. Overall CANID scores had substantial repeatability at six (ICC = 0.63, 95% CI [0.51, 0.72]) and twelve (ICC = 0.59, 95% CI [0.47, 0.70]) months, as did all task-specific subscores. CANID scores at 6-month follow-up suggested modest practice effects (0.23 SD improvement in overall score relative to baseline), similar to those reported in human studies, but we did not find evidence for practice effects at one-year follow-up. To facilitate CANID’s use, we provide detailed protocols, video libraries, data recording instruments, experimenter training guidelines, and R code for scoring in an Open Science Framework repository.