Are we aware of dogs' awareness?

A Review Of Canine Self-Awareness Research

Research Team

Isaura (Isa) Souza

Dr. Carrie Hall

NACE Career Readiness Competencies

Research Team

This research began as a group project for PSY375 (Dog Cognition), members of the group who contributed to the project and thus to this research poster are Isaura (Isa) Souza, Alex Urusov, Morgan Singh, Pravab Tiwari, and Sharla Turner. The main author of the poster is Isa Souza and the class instructor and mentor for the project is Dr. Carrie Hall.

Isaura (Isa) Souza

Psychology, Individualized Studies

Dr. Carrie Hall

Department of Psychology

Background

Self-awareness can be defined as the cognitive ability to discriminate the self from other conspecifics (Horowitz, 2017). Apart from humans and great apes, few animals have been clearly shown to demonstrate relevant aspects of self-awareness - when it comes to dogs, the debate is ongoing. This poster summarizes the contributions of five subfields to the topic of canine self-awareness, and exposes the criticism to current research to clarify the current state of dog self-awareness research.

Research Poster

Conclusions

Traditional and olfactory self-recognition tests have not provided convincing evidence of self awareness in dogs (Gallup & Anderson, 2018), and future studies should continue to refine olfactory-mirror paradigms. Self-reflective emotions, body awareness, and ToM research has shown more promise (eg.: Bastos et al. 2021 ; Pongrácz et al., 2023 ; Udell et al., 2011). However, current studies cannot determine whether results stem from higher-level cognition, or conditioning and other lower-level processes. The current lack of evidence may reflect a growing field, rather than the total lack of self-awareness in dog. Yet, as of now, claims of dog self-awareness are insufficiently supported.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dr. Carrie Hall for making PSY375 such a pleasant and instructive experience; thank you to my class team mates for making our team work feel meaningful and exciting, and for allowing me to use part of our group work for this individual presentation.

References

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NACE Career Readiness Competencies

Critical Thinking, Communication, Teamwork

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