* Guest Post
If you’re trying to solve a problem, you’re aware that you don’t know the answer and need additional information. This idea that you’re aware that you don’t know something is a type of metacognition – or knowing that you don’t yet know something. For instance, if you’re struggling on your math homework, you know that there is an answer; you just haven’t found out what it is yet. You know that there must be a solution, otherwise the teacher wouldn’t have set the work. It’s your job to think hard, gather more information, and then write down the solution.
It turns out that this ability to recognize what you don’t know is rare in the animal kingdom. Humans are part of an exclusive group of organisms that can understand when they need to seek more information to solve a problem.
New research indicates that K9s, like the Labrador retriever answers the question do dogs know they don’t know something, and will seek out more information to solve the problem. Rather than acting on mere instinct, Labs appear to have an ability to think about thinking and approach tasks from a surprisingly human problem-solving perspective.
New Research Suggests Dogs are Capable of Metacognition
It appears dogs are members of an elite group of animals, including people, chimpanzees and dolphins, that can think about thinking. Your lab puppies aren’t going to grow up into philosophers, but there’s a good chance that at some point in their lives, they’ll think about a problem from a logical, practical perspective, and try to solve it.
How do we know that dogs engage in metacognition? Much of it comes from research done by scientists. Take the work done by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, for example. Investigators designed an experiment in which dogs had to find treats or toys behind one of two walls. The subjects did not know in advance which of the walls concealed the treat, and so the experiment tested whether they would seek additional information to find out what was hiding behind. The researchers found that the animals investigated the walls to find out whether they concealed the things they wanted, providing evidence of metacognition.
The experiment was set up in such a way as to encourage investigation. Rather than making the walls solid, the researchers left small gaps so that the animals could peer through to see whether there was a treat on the other side. To the researchers’ surprise, the subjects acted very similarly to how people would behave in a similar situation; they peered through the gaps, hoping to find out which wall hid the treat.
Dogs Investigate More When they know Food is Hidden.
One of the criticisms of this kind of research in the past is that dogs only appear to search for food because food is of high value. It’s an automatic process, rather than something metacognitive.
This notion has been dubbed the “passport effect.” People are much more likely to search vigorously for something that they perceive as important, like a passport, than they are for an everyday item, just as our furry friends are much more likely to search for something they perceive as important, like food.
So was this just the passport effect, as applied to dogs, or were the hounds really thinking about thinking, as the data imply?
The researchers decided to vary the value of the food on offer. Instead of offering delectable treats only, they set up the experiment to work with a variety of foods, both high and low value. What they found was that the value of the food didn’t seem to matter: dogs performed investigations all the same. What’s more, they appeared to search more when they did not know which wall concealed the treat. In other words, it wasn’t just something instinctive, but something that the dogs did in response to a specific situation.
Do Dogs Know they are Dogs?
If there is evidence that dogs can understand they are lacking information, is there any evidence that they know that they are dogs?
The evidence so far suggests that dogs can recognize other dogs and they know that they are different from people. Given how different breeds of dogs appear to we humans, this is no mean feat. Dogs can tell that they are looking at another dog, whether it’s a pug or an Afghan hound.
Whether a dog knows that it is a dog itself is a profound philosophical, rather than a scientific, question. There’s no way of knowing whether dogs have a concept of what it means to be a dog, or whether they can recognize themselves as such. However, there is evidence that they see themselves as being different from humans, suggesting that they understand the concept of “otherness.”
No dog will ever be able to hold a conversation or tell an owner that they know what they are, but there is evidence that dogs see humans as the natural leaders in their environment. Whether we are just other members of their pack remains to be seen.
Do Dogs Have Metacognition?
The researchers at the Max Planck Institute were unwilling to confirm that dogs have metacognition. But their study does suggest that dogs at least have the ability to investigate first before trying to solve a problem, indicating that they recognize that they are unaware.
The present study relied heavily on the sense of sight – the primary human sense. But for dogs, the most important sense is arguably that of smell. Dogs, therefore, might be more likely to engage in metacognition if they can use their sense of smell as the primary tool for collecting information.
In future experiments, we’re likely to see setups where the walls allow dogs to detect the food or treats behind, helping them to sniff their way to the desired reward. What we know so far suggests that dogs don’t just investigate things out of instinct: they seem to be thinking their way through problems. Of course, we can never ask a dog what it’s thinking, so confirming metacognition will be a challenge. But the more experiments that we have like this one, the more the evidence will swing in their favor.
