Dogs Can Understand Photographs

Even though dogs have been around people for a long time, we still know surprisingly little about their abilities.

We have very little idea of what goes through a dog’s mind when we try to communicate with her. She might turn her head in an endearing fashion when we talk to her, but what does she really understand? Mostly, we have no clue.

Now some recent experiments are starting to untangle the abilities of dogs to form mental concepts when we try to communicate with them.

A recent article looked at whether dogs can understand iconic images (Kaminski, J., S. Templemann, J. Call and M. Tomasello. 2009. Domestic dogs comprehend human communication with iconic signs, Developmental Science 12: 831-837).

Iconic images are things like photographs or things that look like the real object. For example, a photograph of a hamburger is an iconic image of a real hamburger. Similarly, a rubber toy hamburger is also an iconic representation of a real hamburger.

In this article, the authors worked with 5 border collies.  Three of the collies knew the names of a variety of objects, and two of the collies had no experience with names. Each collie was presented with either a small rubber toy that looked identical to a larger one that was hidden in another room among a variety of other toys, or was shown a photograph of a toy.

After being shown either the small toy or a photograph, the dogs were asked to go and fetch the large toy.

All of the dogs did remarkably well at retrieving the larger toy when shown the small toy, even though there were other toys in the adjacent room. Also, at least some of the dogs could generalize from looking at a photograph of a toy and go into the next room and bring back the toy that was shown in the photograph.

While it is not particularly surprising that the dogs were able to look at a small toy and bring back an identical larger toy, it is surprising that the dogs could generalize from a two-dimensional photograph to a three-dimensional object.  This suggests that dogs can form mental concepts from the information that we give them.

Another study suggesting that dogs can form mental concepts was reported in 2007 in the journal Animal Cognition (Adachi, I. et al. 2007. Dogs recall their owner’s face from hearing their owner’s voice. Animal Cognition 10: 17-21).

In that study, the authors used a variety of different dogs to see if the dogs could form a mental concept of their owner from the sound of the owner’s voice.  They first played the sound of the owner’s voice to the dog, and then projected either the owner’s face or the face of a stranger on a nearby LCD screen.  Using video cameras, the authors measured the length of time that the dogs spent looking at the screen when they saw their owner vs. when they saw the face of a stranger.

The dogs spent less time looking at the face of their owner after hearing their owner’s voice.  When they saw the face of a stranger after hearing their owner’s voice, the dogs spent more time looking at the screen.

This suggests that upon hearing the voice of their owner, the dogs formed a mental concept of their owner and expected to see him or her, but were puzzled or confused when they saw the face of someone else. They spent more time looking to figure out why there was a mismatch between what they heard and what they saw.

So when your dog turns her head to the side when you are talking to her, perhaps she really is trying to understand what you are saying.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Comments

[Purina Beta dog food]

Dogs are extremely clever, more so than they are given credit for

[Kate]

Very amazing but definitely true. I believe that dogs can really understand like humans do, they just don't have the ability to speak.

[Randall Johnson]

It's encouraging to see two more peer-reviewed papers being added to the expanding literature on the cognitive abilities of dogs (and, by extension, other animal species). As I read this post, I was reminded of a comment made by renowned neuroanatomist, Dr. Peter S. Morgane, back in the early 1970s: "I think all animals think. But that again becomes a matter of definition. Some people who would want to put animals into a separate category feel they think, but not on the level of humans. But man is pretty egocentric about these things. He doesn't think anything corresponds to or thinks like him, and that's probably true. That doesn't make them a lower form necessarily." It seems he wasn't too concerned about being accused of anthropomorphism by making such a remark way back then and, as I see it, today's animal behavior researchers need to stop worrying so much about this 'accusation' being applied to their investigations. Much of the work that has been done since Dr. Morgane made the above statement supports the premise that many kinds of animals think and experience a varying range of emotions.