We just finished 6 days of Cognition, probably my favorite academy! It is fascinating to realize what our dog's brains are capable of - far more than we were once allowed to believe...
Cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, grasping and applying concepts, reasoning and computation, problem solving and decision making, comprehension, theory of mind and much more. Only in recent years has our arrogant human species granted that other animals, including canines, are capable of cognition. It is truly super-great fun working with our dogs’ brains in this academy. Today science tells us that even insects are cognitive. Woo hoo!!!
The 6 days are crammed with learning as we teach our dogs the concepts of:
· Choice
· Object, Color and Shape Discrimination
· Imitation
· Match to Sample, and yes
· Reading!
Students work in teams, and also develop a rudimentary Cognition Test (study) and develop a Cognition Statement that they present and defend with personal anecdotes and resources that they have researched.
Here’s how each of these works.
1. Choice: The wonderful Dr. Susan Friedman says, “The power to control one’s own outcomes is essential to behavioral health.” Our dogs today have very little choice in their lives – we tell them when to eat, when to sleep, when to play, when to eliminate… Imagine how crazy it would make you if your life was that tightly controlled by someone else! Teaching them a “You Choose” cue and looking for opportunities to give them choices can significantly help their behavioral health. Here's am article of mine: https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/training/cognitive-skills/training-a-dog-to-make-choices/. And here are some academy dogs learning Choice:
2. Discrimination: This involves teaching our dogs the names of things – objects, colors (since they are red-green color blind we focus on blue and yellow) and shapes, and then asking them to indicate the one we ask for. Useful real-life applications down the road… “Bring me my blue socks…”!! Here's an article:
3. Imitation: Claudia Fugazza, studying under Adam Miklosi in Budapest, Hungary, developed this amazing protocol she calls “Do As I Do,” that teaches dogs to imitate human behavior – a skill we were once told was impossible for dogs. Ha! Here is my Imitation article: https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/training/cognitive-skills/train-your-dog-using-imitation/ and Claudia Fugazza's book: https://www.dogwise.com/do-as-i-do-2nd-edition-using-social-learning-to-train-dogs/ . And by the way, NEWSFLASH - Claudia has now taught dogs to imitate human behavior that they watch on a video screen!
4. Match to Sample: With this, you hold up one object and ask your dog to indicate the similar object from an array of choices in front of her. It is amazing who quickly dogs can figure this one out!!! Some people have even had dogs successfully match to the photograph of an object (we’ll be trying that one in our Advanced Cognition Academy in 2025!).
5. Reading: Yes – dogs can read!!! We teach them the word on the card and have them respond by performing the behavior indicated. Next year in Advanced Cognition we’re going to try sentences…
WANT TO PLAY???
Want to play some brain games with your dog? You can find the Discrimination and Reading protocols here: https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/training/cognitive-skills/are-canines-cognitive/
COGNITION STATEMENTS
1. Dogs Use Tools: This one was well-defended with personal anecdotal evidence and some cute YouTube videos (Beagle pushing chair to counter to facilitate counter surfing…), but the team couldn’t find anything in the way of actual studies documenting canine tool use. (Hint to Researchers!) Feel free to share your experience with dogs using tools!
2. Dogs Can Empathize: In addition to anecdotal, a lot more actual hard data on this question, including studies that evaluated canine brain chemistry of dogs appearing to be empathetic and compared it to human brain chemistry. The answer appears to be… yes, they can! (Probably no surprise to you…)
COGNITION TESTS
For the cognition tests, each team develops a hypothesis and then tests it with all the academy dogs, and ay other available dogs we can bring in. This week’s hypotheses were:
1. Presented with two food bowls. When shaken, one makes noise (kibble rattling), the other doesn’t. Hypothesis: Dogs will more frequently move to the bowl that made noise.
2. Two humans are seated – one blindfolded, one not. Hypothesis: Dogs will be more attracted to the seated human with whom they can make eye contact (social acknowledgement) than the human who is blindfolded.
Results of our mini-studies were interesting… what do you think the outcomes were? Keeping you in suspense – tune in to next week’s blog for our findings!
By the way - if I am piquing your interest in perhaps attending our academies, our 2025 academies are up on our website now - you can find them here: https://peaceablepaws.com/peaceable-paws-intern-academies/
Come play with us!!!
Next – a relatively slow week coming up, and then our last academy of 2024 – BMod!!! Until then - sending good thoughts to all our friends recovering from Helene's impact...
Warm Woofs,
Pat
