Spot and Shelby at Harvard Canine Cognition Lab

Today I took a vacation day and brought Spot and Shelby to Harvard's Canine Cognition Lab. They have both been once before, but this time was for different experiments. They each did 2 different ones today.

The first experiment had Spot and Shelby in front of a set up almost like a puppet show theater. It was a black wall with a section that opened up to show the experimenter in a scene. The scene was the person, an object on the left and one on the right. The experimenter would choose one object each time and they videotaped to time how long the dog looked at each scene. The objective was to see if the dog would recognize that the person was making a choice and also notice if after making the same choice several times, would notice a change in the choice. This is a test they also do with human infants to see if they intent and goals. I think Spot paid more attention in this one. For some reason, Shelby was very anxious and whined the whole time. I've never seen that behavior before.

Next we moved on to an experiement to see if a dog would interpret actions of a 2D projected person the same way they would a real person. The experimenter first had me hold Spot or Shelby facing them, and they showed the dog they had a treat and would put it in one of two cups. Then I would release the dog and see if they went to the correct cup. They also tried it where the dog couldn't tell which cup the treat was in, but the person pointed to it, and then I released the dog to see if they could go to the correct cup. Then we did the same thing, except the experimenter was an image projected on the wall. Shelby had a little bit of a problem because she knew the experimenter had the actual treats, so she kept focusing on him, and I had trouble turning her around to face the wall. Spot did really well on this test. He was very enthusiastic and reacted to the 3D and 2D experimenters the same way, including barking at them!