Dog Cognition Centre

Research objectives

Human-dog communication

The main question is how flexible dogs' understanding of human communication is. Dogs are more skillful in making use of human pointing gestures than wolves and even chimpanzees are. However, we do not yet fully understand how dogs perceive such gestures, if e.g., they understand their referential nature. In addition, we are interested in dogs' ability to communicate referentially with humans and whether dogs use their communicative signals to e.g., helpfully communicate a referent to the human.

Visual perspective taking/theory of mind

The main question is whether dogs are sensitive to what others can and cannot see. In our tests the dogs are able to see an object that the human - who is present - cannot see e.g., because the object is in darkness and not illuminated. We want to know whether dogs take this additional information into account when making a decision to e.g., steal forbidden food.

Facial expressions in dogs (Dogs FACS)

We are interested in the types of facial expression dogs produce when interacting with other dogs or with humans. We are also interested in the question how flexible dogs production of facial expression is and whether dogs e.g., intentionally produce certain facial expression to manipulate humans. To study dogs’ facial expression we developed Dog FACS.

Physical cognition

Apart from being interested in how dogs understand their social environment, we are also interested in how dogs understand their physical environment. What do dogs understand about causal relationships? Do dogs understand that objects continue to exist after they have disappeared from the dog’s view?

Cooperation and helping

We are interested in questions regarding dogs’ cooperative interactions with other dogs and/or with humans. We are also interested in questions regarding helping in dogs. Though many anecdotes suggest that dogs sometimes help humans (e.g., by recruiting potential helpers when their owner is in distress), as of yet there is not enough research to address this question scientifically.

Here we are especially interested to know whether dogs have the motivation to help others but also the cognitive capacity to understand when help is necessary and what to do to fulfill another individual’s goal.