The Cognitive Dog: Savant or Slacker?

Bruce Blumberg & Carolyn BarneyHarvard Extension School- Fall 2008 Class website: http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/ext/12609

Agenda for class

• Introductions

• Overview of course: objectives, themes and big ideas

• Details:

• Readings,assignments, expectations

• Website (accessing e-journals, discussion board, video page, updated syllabus...)

Introductions

Instructors

• Bruce Blumberg

• Senior Scientist, Blue Fang Games, Inc.

• bblumber@fas.harvard.edu

• Carolyn Barney

• Founder, Gemini Dogs Inc.

• cbarney@fas.harvard.edu

A bit about Carolyn... where the paws hit the mat

Bruce’s perspective shaped by...

intelligence in nature

photo by Terri Tepper

Bruce’s perspective shaped by... modeling dog behavior &

learning

Bruce’s perspective shaped by

working with his own dogs...

The dogs around you are your best

instructors

Use this class to sharpen your ability to see what your dog is telling you

Outline for the course

Our goals for you

• Provide an opportunity to read and reflect on a range of topics that ultimately help you better understand dog cognition, emotion, behavior and learning.

• Give you new tools with which to think about how dogs think

• dog centered

• reflects the interplay of genes, development, learning, & performance

• embraces the elegance of doing just enough to get by

• Practical insight for you and your dog

Topics

• Wolf & wild canid behavior

• Perception & communication

• Evolution and development (3)

• Temperament & emotion (3)

• Cognitive skills (4)

• Social learning & learning theory (2)

• Introduction & review (2)

Class 2: setting the stage

• The debate (are dogs special and if so, what makes them special?)

• Do dogs have a differential ability to make use of human cues?

• If so, what accounts for it?

• Hare’s argument: lowered emotional reactivity was selected for, and at a minimum, this set the stage.

• Miklosi’s argument: that is not the whole story, social skills were selected for as well...

• A critique of the debate...

Week 3: what do wolves really do...

• People look to wolf behavior to...

• explain dog behavior

• justify training techniques

• How well does the folk mythology regarding wolf & wild canid behavior reflect reality?

• Is the paradigm even useful?

• Hint: NO!!!

Week 4: Perception & communication

• What do we know about how dogs and wild canids sense and perceive the world?

• Morphological diversity is probably matched by perceptual diversity

• How do we know what dogs sense and perceive?

• What conclusions can we draw from these differences?

• 2nd hour: CB on “is understanding wolves useful when training dogs?”

Week 5: Origins of the dog

• What do we know about the origins of the dog based on molecular genetics?

• A quick intro to molecular genetics.

• Evidence from molecular genetics is suggestive, but it needs to be interpreted with care, and definitive conclusions are (or should be) elusive.

• The dog genome and what it tells us...

• 2nd Hour: CB on observing dogs and what to look for

Week 6: Origins of the dog

• Did people explicitly create dogs from wolves, or did dogs arise as wolves adapted to a new ecological niche: human settlements...

• The Belyaev experiment: breeding for tame temperament in foxes had unexpected morphological and physiological effects

• Coppinger’s hypothesis

• Big idea: small changes can have big effects

• Guest Lecturers: Ray Coppinger & Kathryn Lord!!!!

Week 7: Development

• The dog sitting before you is the result of a complex interplay of genes, development, developmental environment and learning

• Big ideas:

• The co-action of genes and developmental context:

• “It is as likely that songbirds inherit conspecifics that sing as it is that they will have a syrinx with which to sing” - M. West

• Critical periods

• 2nd Hour: CB on what we think puppies need for optimal development

Week 8: Temperament

• How do we think about, and measure, regularities in how a given dog responds to its world?

• Are there just a few dimensions along which the temperament of any dog can be described?

• Are there regularities across breeds?

• What do these tests really measure?

• When does a dog become a dog?

• 2nd Hour: CB on puppy temperament testing

Weeks 9 & 10: Emotion

• What do we know about the neural basis for emotion in animals?

• Big ideas

• One can’t begin to understand dog behavior, learning and cognition without addressing emotion, especially attachment, fear, anger.

• The role of self-motivating and self-rewarding behavior

• 2nd Hour: CB on the practical consequences of fear (week 9) and arousal (week 10)

Class 11: Social cognition in dogs & experimental design...

• A critical review of recent experiments that purport to show that dogs make use of human social cues, e.g., pointing gestures, to guide their behavior

• Interpret the experimental evidence in light of what we have learned in the class up to this point.

• Cast a critical eye on the experimental design and analysis

• Performance vs. ability: don’t wanna vs. can’t

• One person’s cognitive experiment may be another dog’s foraging task

Class 12: Simple but reliable rules

• We look at some classic experiments that purport to measure different cognitive skills of dogs

• Object permanence

• Means-end connections

• Big idea: dogs may be masters of using simple but reliable rules to guide their behavior.

• Often an elegant solution to a hard problem

Class 13: Dogs and words

• We examine old and new experiments that suggest that dogs can have quite impressive abilities to use words as cues...

• Are the words labels for objects or labels for an action-object pair?

• Is this another example of simple but reliable rules?

Class 14: Introduction to learning theory & social learning

• We examine a number of examples of social learning in dogs and get a sense for the power of 2 forms of social learning...

• Stimulus enhancement

• Local enhancement

• Big idea: social learning as a way to learn simple but reliable rules

• CB on learning theory and its application to dog training.

Class 15: Dogs and People: theory and practice...

• A deeper look into the relationship between dogs and people

• 2nd hour: CB on careers in dogs...

Class 16: Putting it all together...

• Review of the key themes...

Practical matters...

Readings

Readings

• Books

• Journals

Readings: why?

• Knowledge is a good thing

• Multiple perspectives is a good thing

• Knowing the primary sources is a good thing

• What they actually said & the actual basis for what they said

• Forming your own perspective is a good thing

Readings: books

• Required books

• Coppinger & Coppinger: Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution.

• Miklosi, A: Dog Behavior, Evolution and Cognition

• McConnell: For the love of a Dog: Understanding emotion in you and your dog

• Harvard Coop, www.dogwise.com, www.amazon.com

• Not available at the Reserve Library

Readings: books

• Useful books

• Coren: How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind

• LeDoux: The Synaptic Self (The Emotional Brain is ok...)

• Scott & Fuller: Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog

• Mech & Boitani: Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation

• Harvard Coop, www.dogwise.com, www.amazon.com

Readings: journal articles

• Original source material on dogs published in scientific journals such as:

• Nature, Science, Animal Behavior, Trends in Cognitive Science, American Scientist, Animal Cognition, Journal of Comparative Psychology, Journal of Applied Animal Behavior Science

• Available online...

• Check syllabus if available directly from a website

• Typically, through harvard libraries

Expectations

Readings...

• The class will be most useful to you if you...

• do the assigned reading, reflect on it, and draw your own conclusions & meanings from it.

• If short on time, pick one reading and focus on it, rather than skim all

• A good way to reflect on the readings is to observe, work with, and/or play with your own dog, or go to a dog park and observe other dogs.

• If you need to justify it, consider it homework :-)

Assignments

• 2 short problem sets (8 to 10 multi-part questions)

• On material covered in lectures and in the readings

• 20% of grade each

• Take-home, open book, note, discussion board but answer must be your own.

• 1 final paper

• 8-10 page paper on a topic of your choice. Demonstrate mastery of the material presented in class and in the readings.

• 50% of grade

Assignments

• Participate on discussion board

• Should be equivalent over the semester to an informal 3-4 page paper.

• 10% of grade

• If you are uncomfortable with discussion board, you may submit a 3-4 page paper based on some thread on the discussion board

• due by the end of the semester

Grading philosophy

• The best papers in my eyes are those that...

• Make me think

• Show that you are forming your own perspective on the ideas presented in class and via the readings

• I want to read what you think, and I want to see you present your ideas in a clear and articulate manner

• I want to see evidence that you have done the readings and paid attention to the lectures :-)

Academic honesty

• Please be sure you understand your responsibility with respect to the appropriate use and attribution of sources...

• www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos/sources

• There should never be any confusion in the reader’s mind whether the idea and/or presentation of that idea is yours, or belongs to someone else.

• If in doubt, ask...

• I am required to report cases of suspected academic dishonesty to the dean’s office.

Extensions

• Extensions for the 2 problem sets...

• email me (bblumber@fas.harvard.edu) prior to due date to request an extension...

• 1 week extension, NQA

• Extension for the final paper

• Submit a formal request via email & by sending me a signed Extension Request form prior to due date.

• I can not give a passing grade without receiving final paper, and can not submit a grade of INC without also submitting extension form.

Extensions

• If real life intrudes, please don’t hesitate to ask for an extension!

Class website: http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/ext/12609

Memorable

URL

Class website It is your friend

Accessing Harvard’s e-journal collection

accessing e-journals can be accessed from:http://lib.harvard.edu/

E journal web page Be sure to log in

Harvard ID & PIN required

Click on title

Enter author and/or volume & issue Access to ScienceDirect is

worth price of course

Click to download

Great for doing general searches

Retrieved articles Not all are available, though

Accessing class discussion board

Class discussion board

An important dimension of class

Class discussion board

Class discussion board

• Use this to discuss readings & ideas presented in class, or questions that you have from class

• Ask dog-related questions that you think are of general interest to your classmates

• Please be respectful of the ideas of others (no flame wars...)

Video page: for watching recorded lectures on line

Lectures available on-line 24-48 hours after

actual ectureYou need to be logged in to see video page link

pdfs of slides will be posted the day after the

lecture

Let me know if I can help make online

lectures better

Next week: Setting the stage

• The great debate...

• Readings

• Miklosi (book)

• Hare & Tomasello (e-journals)