The first speaker of the Barnard Cognitive Science Symposium series was Dr. Horowitz, a Psychology Professor and the Head of Barnard Dog Cognition Lab.

As of 2022, roughly 45% of Americans share their house (and maybe their bed, too) with a canine companion. So, chances are, you or someone you know has a pet dog. People often see our dogs as extensions of themselves, as members of their families, and because of that, it is easy to forget that we never really know what dogs are thinking or feeling. Dr. Horowitz is working to break through that barrier and allow humans to truly understand dogs.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the room (aside from the free pizza and cookies) was how crowded it was. As anyone who has ever been to one of Barnard’s Therapy Dog events knows, students love dogs. Still, I was surprised to see how many people were also interested in the topic.

Dr. Alexandra Horowitz first came to Barnard in 2004, and, in the years since then, she has taught classes ranging from First Year Seminars and English Lectures to, obviously, Psychology. She took time off in 2008 to write the #1 New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, and she has recently published The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves.

Dr. Horowitz started her talk with an account of how she came to study dog cognition. After getting an undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, she earned her Ph.D. in the young field of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. She highlighted how much her background in Philosophy has helped her as a researcher, stating that  it allowed her to get “different perspectives on the questions [she was] asking.” She always knew that she wanted to study non-human animals because there are still so many broad, unanswered questions about them.

One of the most fundamental questions is about whether animals  possess a theory of mind—are they aware of their individuality and can they comprehend that other beings may have different beliefs, feelings, and desires? This is a hard question to answer when so many studies are designed by people for beings who interpret the world like us. A lot of animals, because they don’t understand what exactly is happening, will act differently when directly observed. But, it hit Dr. Horowitz on one of her many daily walks with her pet dog at the time—dogs are easily accessible subjects to study, and being domesticated, they are accustomed to human interaction.

Dogs have long been involved in psychological studies but usually as models to understand general thinking and problem-solving, rather than as the subjects themselves (consider Pavlov, who studied dogs to understand conditioning).

The dogs studied at the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab differ from Pavlov’s dogs in many respects, besides being the focus of the studies. The lab does not have any “dog test subjects.” Instead, pet dogs from New York are brought in by their owners for playtime and games, and then they leave after an hour with a newfound sense of academic prowess and a “Doctorate of Dogness” certificate.  

Dr. Horowitz then moved on to a controversial topic in the world of animal research: the anthropomorphization of subjects–the attribution of human traits or emotions to non-human objects. “Humans have been anthropomorphizing animals for decades,” Horowitz remarked, as the projector flicked through photos of animals dressed in Halloween costumes, ending on a 19th-century painting of a pig on trial for murder (the trial allegedly happened in 1457, and the pig was found guilty). She explains how anthropomorphizing can be helpful in creating images of how animals act, but it can also cloud our judgment as we might overlay our own emotions onto an otherwise neutral situation.

One of the most common canine anthropomorphisms is the idea that dogs “feel guilty.” According to a 2009 Scientific American article, 74% of dog owners think their dog “feels guilty” when they’ve done something wrong. Commonly interpreted signs of guilt include a dog averting their gaze, rolling over to show their stomach, dropping their tail and giving a low wag, and lowering their ears and head. Dr. Horowitz and her lab wanted to investigate this directly, so they created a situation where dogs might “feel guilty.” A treat was placed on the ground, and the dog was given a command to “wait.” The owner would leave the room and researchers would call the owner back in, telling them whether or not the dog ate the treat and instructing them to act accordingly. If the dog ate the treat, the owner re-entered the room mildly reprimanding their dog, and the number of “guilty look behaviors” made were recorded. The really interesting part of the experiment began when the researchers started telling the owner the wrong information. Dr. Horowitz played a short video of a dog being told not to eat a treat, followed by the researcher grabbing the treat off the floor as soon as the owner left. The owner was called back in and, being told that the dog ate the treat, began to scold. The dog immediately averted his gaze and lowered his head, briefly making very guilty-looking eye contact with the camera (which was met with a sea of “awws” from the room). The study showed that the owner’s behavior, not the dog’s level of guilt, created the circumstances for a dog “looking guilty.”

When living around animals, it can be very easy to assume that they see the world just as we see it or, at most, they see variations of the world we see. Dogs see a significantly different world from us: they see fewer colors, have a much wider peripheral vision, and can notice subtle motion that we might miss. More than that, though, dogs are fundamentally olfactory creatures. Dr. Horowitz explained how “nose beats eyes” as dogs have hundreds of millions more olfactory receptor cells than humans do, they can sniff 7 times a second, and there is a direct connection between the olfactory bulb and the visual cortex in canine brains. 

Using this information, Dr. Horowitz and her lab team wanted to alter the classic “mirror-mark” test to be scent-based. The mirror-mark test is considered a test of self-recognition and it studies how animals react to looking at themselves in a mirror with a colored mark drawn on their foreheads. Many animals like chimpanzees, dolphins, and one elephant have passed the test, recognizing themselves in the mirror and reaching up to touch the mark on their bodies. Not only does the test require an animal be able to realize that the image in the mirror is of themself, but it also requires them to care enough about their appearance to notice a change in it. Dogs, time and time again, fail the mirror mark test because they can never seem to realize that it is themself that they see in the mirror. What if the test didn’t work because the canine experience is so smell based? What if the mirror was a “smell mirror?” That is exactly what Dr. Horowitz tried to figure out.

The researchers at Barnard’s Dog Cognition Lab looked at whether dogs would recognize their own scent, and then whether the dogs would recognize if a mark was added to their scent. Dr Horowitz played a video compilation of dogs running into frame, sniffing different tins one by one, which was met with many noises of adoration from the audience (and some laughs when one of the dogs peed on the scent box).

The study found that dogs sniffed other animals’ odors longer than their own, which shows that they can distinguish their own scent from others’, and they also sniffed their own scent longer when it was marked, suggesting that they can tell when their own identifiers have been messed with. Dogs were also just as interested in the scent of dogs they live with as they were their own scent. Dr. Horowitz remarked that “maybe their sense of self is more expansive than ours and includes other members of their families.”

Despite all the hard work that Dr. Horowitz and her team do, society has a never-ending list of questions about our canine companions. The Dog Cognition lab works tirelessly to explore the minds and experiences of America’s favorite pet. If you have a dog in New York, they, too, can contribute to this research by joining a study–and they will even leave with a Doctorate of Dogness which you can brag about to other pet-parents at the dog park!

Image via Barnard