Do dogs know they can be wrong?

Dogs may have some awareness of their own knowledge, according to a recent study. When they don’t have enough information to solve a particular problem, they can use their metacognitive skills to look for other ways to fill those gaps. This behavior is very similar to that of primates.

Scientists working on the psychology of poroCognitive scientists are studying animals to learn about the evolution of roThe characteristics, similarities and rotions between species and what this knowledge can tell us about ourselves. Such research is mostly experimental research done in a laboratory setting and focuses primarily on cognitive processes.

In the DogStudies laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Juliane Bräuer studies dogs. In a publication thatoThe study was published in the journal „Learning & Behavior”, Bräuer and her colleague Julia Belger described metacognitive abilities in psow.

Metacognitive abilities are described as thinking about thinking, the ability to realize what one knows, what information has been assimilated and whether more information is needed to achieve a certain goal. It’s recognizing and analyzing its own processesoIn cognitive.

To test metacognitive abilities in dogsow researchers designed a test in which theorym the four-legged dogs had to find a reward – a toy or food – behind one of the twooch fences in the shape of a letter „V”. In addition, they were able to use a hole in the fence to get additional information about the prize. The study involved nearly 50 psow roof different races.

The prize was placed behind one of the twooch fenceow. In someorych cases dog mohead to see behind ktorym fence was laid the prize. But in a situation where he didn’t see it, the authors noted how often the dogs looked through a hole in the fence before making a choice. The question was whether, like chimpanzees and humans, a dog would check through a hole where a reward had been placed?

It turned out that dogs sought additional information much more often when they could not see where the reward was hidden. Checking through a hole in the fence suggests that the dog is trying to gather more information before making a final decision, and this means that it realized it did not have knowledge of where the prize was and was looking for additional information. And this is a manifestation of metacognitive abilities.

– These results show that dogs tend to actively seek additional information when they cannot see where the reward is hidden. The fact that dogs were more likely to look through the hole when they did not know the location of the reward may suggest that they exhibit metacognitive abilities because they fulfill one of the assumptions of knowledge of knowledge, Belger explains.

In addition to humans, the ability to "of knowing what one knows" was previously observed only in great apes and until now was thought to be unique to primates.

But someoers say that animals, such as dogs, can search for additional information, but that this is a manifestation of instinctive behavior, rather than acting through a metacognitive process. To assess this, Bräuer and Belger have tested whether dogs exhibit the so-called “star-forming” phenomenon. "passport effect" described by Joseph Call. When people are looking for something very important, such as a passport, they will engage in a more active search and more often check rotion of places than when they are looking for something less important. The desire to make sure the passport is in the luggage when going on a tripoż, is higher the higher the cost of confusion and the more time has elapsed since the last time they checked the.

Similar behavior has been observed in monkeys when searching for high-value food, so a combinedoł monitored changes in the behavior of psow when considering low- or high-value foods and using toy and food examples.

Checking through a hole, however, did not always make dogs more successful. In a variant with food or a toy as a reward, when dogs checked, they were more successful than when they did not check. However, in the second variant, in whichohe reward was high- or low-value food, even if the dogs checked, they were no more successful than would be expected based on chance.

The authors speculate that this may be due to other problems. Dogs are so excited to find a reward that they cannot refrain from approaching the nearest fence, even when they see that there is probably no reward there.

Ogoln general, the authors of the study concluded that dogs, while showing some degree of search flexibility, are not as flexible as primates. Test resultsow have not made it possible to conclusively adjudicate whether dogs have metacognitive abilities, although some evidence of this has been obtained.