Dog Cognition Centre
For a number of reasons, the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) is a very interesting model for investigating different questions regarding the evolution of cognitive abilities.
Domestic dogs have been living with humans for about 15,000–30,000 years. One hypothesis is that through selection during domestication dogs may have evolved specialized cognitive skills as an adaptation to their unique habitat, the human environment. Research in the past two decades has shown, for example, that dogs, as a result of selection pressures during domestication, have evolved an understanding of human forms of communication not to be found in other species (including chimpanzees and wolves).
Our research is strictly observational. There is no invasive research of any kind. We give the dogs various fun games to solve and by observing their decisions and strategies, we learn about their behaviour and cognitive processes. Dogs are always rewarded with food or play. The Centre invites family dogs of all breeds, genders and ages to take part in our fun activities and fun games.
Researchers from the Department of Psychology will be studying all kinds of questions around dog cognition some of which are listed below:
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.
Take part in our research
We're always looking for volunteers to take part in our dog cognition research studies. If you're interested in registering you and your dog, please fill in the form below.
Interested in volunteering with us?
We accept volunteer research assistants for (minimum) 3 month placements. Please contact Juliane Kaminski for further information.
Discover our work at the Dog Cognition Centre
At the Dog Cognition Centre, we're answering some of the biggest questions in canine research.
Is your dog a genius?
Now it might sound like something only a devoted dog owner would ask, but here at the University of Portsmouth's
Dog Cognition Centre at Langston campus, it's actually an area of serious scientific research. Researchers from Portsmouth, along with colleagues in Germany, have been looking at a rare and remarkable group of dogs known as label learners.
These are dogs that can recognise hundreds of objects just by being told their name. No hand gestures, no visual cues, just the word.
Only 11 dogs across five countries made the cut for the study. Border collies mostly, but also crossbreeds, a Spanish water dog, and even a pug.
The big question the researchers wanted to ask was what makes these dogs different?
They put each through a series of eight cognitive tasks, testing learning, problem solving, memory, and how they communicate with humans.
So we identified label learner dogs, and then we created little cognitive tests, little games that they can play that show us how they understand the world and how they understand the environment and all these kinds of things.
And then we identified non-label learner dogs and we compared these two groups to see if the label learner dogs are in any way better than the non-label learners.
For me, the most interesting that they were really good at inhibiting their first response.
So that means they were really good in controlling their behaviour not doing something that made no sense.
We think that because they've been living with us for such a long time that they might have adapted to our world in certain ways and in some sense became a bit more human-like and I think that makes them a really interesting model species in comparative psychology.
If we would be able to develop a test that could identify these dogs at puppy stage, we could identify potentially really good assistant dogs.
The University of Portsmouth's Dog Cognition Centre is Britain's first facility dedicated exclusively to studying how dogs understand humans and the world around them.
To find out more, head to port.ac.uk/research.
Our PhD candidates
- Jennifer Leighton-Birch
- Amy West
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