The author and her labradoodle Emerson.
Photo: Lee Pellegrini
Learning from Man鈥檚 Best Friend
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For thirty seconds, I cooed at Emerson, my eighty-pound labradoodle, and scratched behind his ears (his favorite). 鈥淪top,鈥� called Molly Byrne, a Ph.D. student in Boston College鈥檚 Canine Cognition Center, who was observing us via Zoom. I placed my hands in my lap and sat silently and stone-faced, staring straight ahead, for the next half minute. Emerson tried to make eye contact with me before flopping on his back and nudging my legs and feet with his snout.
Emerson and I were participating in what鈥檚 known as the 鈥渟till-face鈥� experiment. Previously conducted with young children, it calls for a caretaker to interact with an infant and then suddenly become unresponsive. Anticipating back-and-forth conversation, the baby will babble and attempt to re-engage with the adult. The Canine Cognition Center is looking at whether dogs have similar social expectations of their owners.聽
鈥淲e鈥檙e interested in everything that dogs can tell us about psychology,鈥� said Angie Johnston, the center鈥檚 primary investigator and an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at 51茶馆. 鈥淪ometimes that means we compare dogs to human children so we can figure out what鈥檚 similar and what鈥檚 different in the way they think and how they learn.鈥� The researchers are curious about which aspects of dog psychology have been shaped by domestication and close contact with humans, and which are inherent. (To help shed light on these questions, Johnston鈥檚 lab also works with dingoes at an Australian sanctuary鈥攖he animals are related to dogs but aren鈥檛 domesticated.) The center鈥檚 research into how dogs see the world could inform training for service pups and bolster human-dog bonds. 鈥淲e don't know as much about dogs as you might think,鈥� Johnston said, 鈥済iven how involved they are in our lives.鈥�
When I asked Johnston why she studies dogs to learn about humans rather than studying primates鈥攐ur closest relations among animals鈥攕he explained that while humans are sensitive to and learn from other humans, other primates aren鈥檛 really interested in learning from each other or from us. Dogs, however, are very tuned in to human social information. 鈥淚t seems like what's happened over domestication is that dogs have sort of outpaced our closest primate relatives in how well they are attuned to cues that signal I鈥檓 trying to get your attention, I鈥檓 trying to teach you something, I鈥檓 trying to connect with you,鈥� Johnston said. 鈥淎nd they learn from these cues much more quickly than, say, a chimpanzee.鈥�
“We鈥檙e interested in everything that dogs can tell us about psychology. Sometimes that means we compare dogs to human children so we can figure out what鈥檚 similar and what鈥檚 different in the way they think and how they learn.”
As an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Dallas, Johnston studied how children learn and evaluate information. She shifted her focus to dogs while earning a doctorate in psychology at Yale, where she helped launch the university鈥檚 Canine Cognition Center in 2013. After landing at Boston College in July 2019, Johnston designed 51茶馆鈥檚 Canine Cognition Center, which began enrolling area pooches in experiments last spring.聽
The center was open for only about a month, however, before the pandemic closed 51茶馆鈥檚 campus. But Johnston and her team are keeping busy: They鈥檝e started virtual studies (like the one Emerson and I participated in) and also published a paper in the聽Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society聽showing that dogs and puppies use a 鈥渨in-stay, lose-shift鈥� strategy to solve problems. Basically, if a dog finds a treat in a location one time, it will keep going back to that location. If the treat is then moved elsewhere, the dog will shift and try a different location. 鈥淭his is really exciting because this is not something that we see all animals doing,鈥� Johnston said. 鈥淲ith dogs, it always comes back to the social piece, how they cooperate with us and learn from us.鈥澛�
The report is illustrative of what sets 51茶馆鈥檚 Canine Cognition Center apart from other similar initiatives around the country. 鈥淪ome people are mostly interested in dogs because of what they tell us about humans, and other people are mostly interested in dogs just for the sake of dogs鈥攐ur lab is really interested in both,鈥� Johnston said. 鈥淎nd so if you think about the Venn diagram of what people are testing with dogs, we really do occupy a unique space.鈥�
It鈥檚 too early to draw firm conclusions from the testing that Emerson and I did鈥攖he Canine Cognition Center鈥檚 still-face experiment is ongoing鈥攂ut I now know that when he nudges my hand to resume a belly rub, he鈥檚 exhibiting a learned behavior and looking for me to fulfill my end of our social contract. And I鈥檓 more than happy to oblige.聽
