Dogs know when they don't know
Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - 09:40
in Psychology & Sociology
Researchers at the DogStudies lab at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have shown that dogs possess some "metacognitive" abilities—specifically, they are aware of when they do not have enough information to solve a problem and will actively seek more information, similarly to primates. To investigate this, the researchers created a test in which dogs had to find a reward—a toy or food—behind one of two fences. They found that the dogs looked for additional information significantly more often when they had not seen where the reward was hidden.