Dognition, Part 1

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From the course by Duke University

Dog Emotion and Cognition

2253 ratings

Duke University

Dog Emotion and Cognition

2253 ratings

Dog Emotion and Cognition will introduce you to the exciting new study of dog psychology, what the latest discoveries tell us about how dogs think and feel about us, and how we can use this new knowledge to further strengthen our relationship with our best friends.

From the lesson

The Paradox of a Best Friend That Evolved From Our Worst Enemy

This module will provide an introduction to cognitive psychology and evolution, while having direct application to your dog. At the beginning of each lecture, Dr. Hare will suggest an optional reading from his book The Genius of Dogs, as well as free Dognition games to play at www.dognition.com/mooc. Dr. Hare discusses how our evolutionary relationship with dogs is a puzzle. He describes the meaning of cognition and what it looks like with modern research on animals. Last, he discusses what Dognition is and how can be used like a laboratory for the class.

The Paradoxical Canine8:56

Cognition Defined10:49

Dognition, Part 16:31

Dognition, Part 26:25

Meet the Instructors

Brian Hare
Associate Professor
Evolutionary Anthropology

This lecture is about dognition.

What is it? So, for this

obviously any of the book will be helpful,

but there's nothing specific in the book about dognition.

You can go to Dognition.com/mooc, and potentially sign up for Dognition.

You'll get to play some of the games for free.

I'm gonna tell you more about that.

You can use Dognition as your laboratory.

So what is Dognition.

Dognition is a citizen science company.

And what that means is we have taken the best games that have been

published over the last decade or so to measure the internal processes,

the different types of intelligence that dogs have,

that are relevant to their flexible problem solving, and in some cases,

their ability to infer the solution to problems they've never seen before.

And it is applying all of those games, not to a population of dogs, but to your dog.

And to try to help you understand your dog better, and

by playing those games with your dog, the reason it's a citizen science project,

is because your data goes into a larger database that's gonna let us

answer a lot of questions that we could not answer any other way.

Because as great as, for instance, my center is at Duke,

we can only test a few hundred dogs a year.

Dognition, though, with everybody who has a dog playing, we get so

much data that we have the ability to answer a bunch of questions that you and

I would love to know the answer to.

Is a Chihuahua have better memory than a Great Dane?

Is it that a young dog somehow

is unable to solve problems using communication that older dogs can?

Do older dogs have memory problems and when would you know?

All of these things are crucially important to your dog,

my dog, but really, there's no better way to answer those questions than you and

me going out and finding about our own dog, so

that we can learn about all dogs through citizen science.

It wasn't just me that put this together,

it was a lot of the best animal cognition experts in the world.

People like Adam Miklosi.

Who runs the, really the premier dog cognition research group in Hungary.

Richard Wrangham, who is a expert on human evolution, but also domestication.

Juliane Kamiski, who's at Portsmouth University in Britain,

who also has a center studying dog psychology and

has made some amazing discoveries about dogs making, using inference, actually.

Josep Call, who is

the director of the Mozpong Institute of Revolutionary Anthropologies,

A grade-A research, but also their dog cognition center.

Again, has really one of the world's top experts on animal cognition.

Finally, Dr. Laurie Santos who's at Yale University and

runs the Yale Canine Cognition Center and

knows a lot about how different animals solve different problems.

So they, together with me, came up the idea, can we take some of the best

games that are in the literature, and make it so that anybody can play them.

They don't have to come to Duke, they don't have to go to Yale, they don't have

to go to Hungary, they don't have to go to Portsmouth to play these games.

They can play them in their home with their own dog which means any dog in

the world can play Dognition.

So here's what we came up with, there are five sets of games and

there are ten games in total that you can play.

And all of these games are based on the published literature.

What I mean by that is, that scientists have done research, they have submitted

that work for publication, it's been reviewed by other scientists, and

it was accepted into a peer reviewed scientific journal.

And has potentially even been replicated, meaning somebody took that same study,

did it again, and went through that same process.

When you do that, then you know that you really got something that's real.

So we took games, these 10 games that had all been through that process.

But we then came up with a way where people at home, with no equipment,

and just with your regular old dog with no training could play those games and

really learn a lot about how their dog thinks.

So you have the yawn game.

You have the eye contact game.

You have arm pointing, foot pointing, the watching, turn your back, cover your eyes,

memory versus pointing, memory versus smell, the delayed cup game, inferential

reasoning, physical reasoning game, that make up the Dognition experience.

And what you'll get when you play Dognition on the website, and of course,

you can do the first two games for free because you're taking this MOOC

is you'll get videos that give you instructions to a game, like this.

So, let me play this video.

So you can see what that's going to be like.

[MUSIC]

>> What you need to play.

A clear food storage container with a closing lid.

Treats.

As before, have your dog sitting or standing near you to start this game.

Place a treat inside the container and then close the lid.

Make sure the lid is on firmly.

Then, place the container on the ground in front of your dog,

but this time, do not open it.

Stand up and step back so that you and your partner are standing behind your dog.

Then have your partner hit start.

If at any point your dog turns back and

looks at you or your partner making eye contact for

a full count of one one thousand, have your partner hit the look button.

This will end the trial.

Then open the container and allow your dog to eat the treat.

>> Good girl, CiSue.

>> If after 45 seconds your dog has not looked back at you,

then regardless of what your dog is doing now.

>> Time >> Walk to the container and open it.

Allowing the dog to eat the treat.

Good boy, Finn.

That's a good boy.

>> You and your dog will do this game a total of four times.

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