Wesson Asher

July 6, 2016

Social graces are the keys to the Socialite's success.

It's hard work making everything look so easy. In a culture obsessed with academic achievement, sometimes it is easy to overlook the fact that gracefully interacting and communicating with others requires talent. In Wesson Asher's case, he takes this talent to a whole new level - it is definitely his genius.

Although Wesson Asher is not as adept at independent problem-solving skills as other dogs, don't jump to any conclusions about his intelligence. Wesson Asher relies on a very specific strategy - using you and other humans in his pack to get what he wants. Judging from his performance in the social games, we suspect that most of the time this strategy succeeds.

The Dognition Profile

Usually, when you get test results, you see a score that means you either passed or failed. To compare your results to someone else, you see who got the higher score. This is why your dog didn't take a test. Instead, you played a series of games together - and when you play a game there is more than one way to win. Success often comes from playing to your strengths.

There has recently been a revolution in how we think about intelligence. The Dognition Profile is based on this cutting-edge field called cognitive science. Cognition is the study of how the mind works and draws on many scientific disciplines, from psychology to computer science to neuroscience.

By studying animals, cognitive scientists have made three important discoveries:

Animals use many types of cognition to survive (learning skills from others, remembering the location of food, inferring the solution to a new problem or deceiving others during competition).
Different animals rely on different cognitive strategies. Asking if a crow is more intelligent than a dolphin is like asking whether a hammer is a better tool than a saw. Each animal has strategies to solve a unique set of problems.
Just because an animal tends to use a certain strategy to solve specific problems doesn't mean he or she will always apply that strategy to all types of problems. Animals rely on a toolbox of strategies that depend on a variety of factors. Dognition gives you insight to the most significant tools that your dog will use on a daily basis to interact with you and the world.

Based on these findings, the Dognition Profile looks at five cognitive dimensions. Rather than counting correct and incorrect answers, the Dognition Profile identifies your dog's cognitive style, and the strategies he relies on to solve a variety of problems. Using this revolutionary new science, the Dognition Profile will give you an unprecedented window into the workings of Wesson Asher's mind and reveal his particular genius.

Cognitive Dimensions

Individualistic

Bonded

Self-Reliant

Collaborative

Trustworthy

Wily

Present-Minded

Retrospective

Impulsive

Logical

Empathy • Reading and responding to the emotions of others

Communication • Using information from others to learn about the environment

Cunning • Using information from others to avoid detection

Memory • Storing past experiences to make future choices

Reasoning • Inferring the solution to new problems

EMPATHY

Wesson Asher's empathy scores were off the charts. Empathy is the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. Humans are extremely empathetic; it is one of our best qualities. Empathy is not something we are taught; it is present even in young children, growing and strengthening as we get older.

Researchers have recently suggested that other animals also have empathy, or at least a basic form of empathy. If this is true, dogs are an ideal place to look. Humans and dogs go back thousands of years - enough time for the bond between us to develop into something special.

You may be interested to know: initial results seem to suggest that large dogs like Wesson Asher are generally more bonded than small dogs. If most dogs are bonded to their owners, Wesson Asher absolutely adores you.

Fig. 1

Individualistic

Bonded

Playing and interacting with your dog like you did in the Dognition games increases your oxytocin, the hormone responsible for feelings of pleasure, bonding, and affection.

Yawn Game

In this game, you yawned and recorded whether Wesson Asher yawned in response. Yawning in dogs can be an indicator of stress, but we were measuring something different - social yawning. The rationale behind this game is that even as young children, we laugh when we see someone laughing, and we cry when we see someone in distress. Our ability to "catch" the emotions of others is called emotional contagion. A common form of emotional contagion is yawning. If you see, hear or even think about someone yawning, you will probably feel an irresistible urge to yawn.

Wesson Asher did not yawn in response to your yawn, but this is not surprising. Although dogs are one of the few species besides humans that contagiously yawn, there is variation among dogs. Data from several research groups shows differing results, but our preliminary data shows that only 20% of dogs yawn contagiously.

Recent studies have shown that dogs only catch yawns from humans, not other dogs.

Eye Contact Game

Dogs can even be better than aspirin. Children in a hospital reported that their pain was four times less when they played with a dog than when they spent the same time relaxing.

In this game, you timed how long Wesson Asher held your eye contact. Before babies can hug or speak, they use eye gaze to bond with their mothers. Research with dogs has shown that a similar phenomenon may happen with owners and dogs. Owners whose dogs stared at them for longer had significant increases in the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin, also known as the "hug hormone," is related to feelings of bonding, pleasure and affection.

Judging by the extraordinary length of time Wesson Asher spent gazing soulfully into your eyes, you probably often find him staring at you for no reason. You might wonder if Wesson Asher is trying to tell you something, like he is hungry, needs to go to the bathroom or has an opinion on what to do over the weekend. But Wesson Asher may not want or need anything - he may be just hugging you with his eyes.

COMMUNICATION

Wesson Asher's performance was highly collaborative. You probably notice that Wesson Asher can read you like a book. Maybe he seems to know where you are going before you do. Maybe he can tell where to find a lost ball just by you glancing in the right direction. However his talent expresses itself, you can be sure that Wesson Asher pays close attention to your gestures and what you are trying to communicate.

Wesson Asher is remarkably like a human infant, who start reading communicative gestures at around nine months old. This ability is the foundation for all forms of culture and communication, including language.

Communication is the basis of many relationships, including our relationship with dogs. Wesson Asher's behavior in the Communication games demonstrated exactly why the dog and human relationship is so special.

Fig. 2

Self-Reliant

Collaborative

Arm Pointing

Although the pointing game may have seemed simple, the skills it requires are quite specialized. Dogs are one of the only animals that rely on human gestures - but even among dogs there is variation. Some dogs are more like infants and rely heavily on our communicative gestures, while other dogs are more like chimpanzees and try to solve problems on their own without our help. Wesson Asher seems to use a mixed strategy. Because Wesson Asher could see food in both places, he didn't really need your help, but occasionally chose to follow your gestures anyway.

Did you know that, on average, dogs can start following a human point as young as 6 weeks old?

Foot Pointing

Many dogs tend to ignore unintentional cues from humans. The most effective way to communicate is to call the dog's name, make eye contact, then point and look in the direction of the object.

Just like in the hand pointing game, Wesson Asher thought he had better cover all bases by sometimes choosing the treat you pointed at and sometimes striking out on his own.

Wesson Asher probably does not see you point with your foot very often, so this game was a way of seeing how flexibly Wesson Asher can read new gestures. Giving animals a new version of a problem they have seen before is a common tactic used to reveal what strategy they are using to solve a problem.

By no means did Wesson Asher do badly on this game; in fact, he developed quite a clever strategy. he developed a right or left side bias, meaning when he didn't know which side was correct, he went to one side every time. This is pretty clever, because 50% of the time he was correct.

CUNNING

In the Cunning games, you placed a treat in front of Wesson Asher and let him know not to take the treat. You then showed Wesson Asher three different attentional states -- watching, turning your back, and covering your eyes.

In order to be at either end of this cognitive dimension, trustworthy or wily, Wesson Asher must show that he can tell when you are looking, and use this information when deciding when to go for the treat. In this case, Wesson Asher's decision did not change no matter which attentional state you presented; he waited roughly the same amount of time in each trial.

This doesn't mean that Wesson Asher can't be trusted, it just shows us that there are other internal factors influencing Wesson Asher's decision.

You can be a proud parent here - Wesson Asher is an extremely obedient dog. When you put the treat in front of him, it did not matter if you were looking or not; Wesson Asher waited patiently until you released him before he took the treat.

You might wonder what effect training has on this dimension. Cognition is not a product of nature or nurture. It is a combination of both. Just because dogs have been trained not to take a treat when their owners tell them not to, does not mean those dogs will never take a treat, especially when the odds are in their favor. In fact, many well-trained dogs are not above sneaking a delicious morsel off the coffee table if they see their owners are not paying attention.

In fact, from Wesson Asher's performance during the Communication dimension, we know that he is excellent at reading your gestures. Wesson Asher is a rare dog who not only obeys your command, he also wants to please you so much that he will resist temptation - whether you are paying attention or not.

Fig. 3

Trustworthy

Wily

When it comes to begging, dogs prefer to be sure you're paying attention. In one study, dogs preferred to beg from a person who was looking at them rather than someone wearing dark sunglasses.

MEMORY

These games examined how heavily Wesson Asher relies on his working memory. Working memory is the kind of memory that allows your dog to keep information in mind for a few minutes and mentally manipulate it to solve problems.

In the memory games, Wesson Asher had to understand that even though the treat disappeared from view, it still existed, and it was his job to find it. It looks like Wesson Asher has a good working memory, but also uses other information, such as smell or social gestures, when making decisions and solving problems.

Fig. 4

Present-Minded

Retrospective

Most dogs can remember their mothers even if they haven't seen them for two years. However, they can't remember their brothers and sisters after a similar separation.

Memory versus Smell

Although Wesson Asher did occasionally go to where the treat was hidden, rather than where you showed him you hid the treat, it is unlikely Wesson Asher could smell the food. If Wesson Asher relied on smell alone he would have found the food each time.

This is completely normal. Whenever we run a study where we hide a treat under one of two cups, the first question people always ask is, "Can't my dog just smell the food under the cup?" It was certainly our first question, but extensive research by half a dozen independent research groups has concluded that dogs do not rely on their sense of smell to find the food in these games.

If dogs were using smell, they would go directly to the cup with the hidden food. However, in similar studies, dogs only choose the correct cup around half the time - which means they are guessing. Dogs do have an excellent sense of smell and can probably detect food if allowed to sniff both cups before choosing. But when you look at their first choice, they cannot localize the food to a specific cup from a distance of 6 feet away.

One study found that to successfully track a person's direction of travel, tracking dogs need at least five sequential footsteps.

Delayed Cup Game

This game was a perfect demonstration of Wesson Asher's excellent working memory. After you hid the treat Wesson Asher had to retain the information for up to two and a half minutes before making a choice.

This skill comes in handy in the wild. Feral dogs tend to be endurance hunters, slowly wearing down their prey. During the chase, the prey may not always be in direct sight, and feral dogs have to remember where their prey was last seen and predict where they might reappear.

In these kinds of memory games, most cats quickly start to forget where an object is after only 10 seconds, while most dogs are still able to show success for up to 4 minutes.

Memory versus Pointing

Wesson Asher clearly sees you as someone to believe in. When Wesson Asher saw you put the treat under one cup then point to the other cup, he chose to rely on your communicative gestures rather than what he can see and remember.

It's no wonder Wesson Asher was so collaborative in the Communication dimension. He is an expert when it comes to reading your gestures, and relies on your input in all kinds of situations.

Despite being genetically similar, dogs and wolves make opposite choices in this game. This difference may be behind why we love dogs so much.

REASONING

You can be very proud. Wesson Asher just aced the most difficult games in the Assessment. Reasoning is the ability to solve a problem when you can't see the answer and have to imagine the solution. Unlike learning through trial and error, which doesn't necessarily require much understanding, reasoning requires that you truly understand the problem and the phenomena behind the problem.

A Sherlock Holmes among dogs, Wesson Asher was able to solve the mystery by imagining different solutions and choosing the one that made the most sense. This leads to a lot of flexibility. He can solve a new version of a problem he has seen before, and spontaneously solve new problems he has never seen before. This is a sign of true genius.

Fig. 5

Impulsive

Logical

Some studies show dogs are better at solving complex puzzles when humans are not around. When humans are around, dogs look to us for help rather than solving it themselves.

Inferential Reasoning Game

Ravens and crows have been shown to have incredible reasoning abilities that surpass dogs, and even rival some human children. But when it comes to being our best friends, dogs still take the cup.

In this game, you presented Wesson Asher with a problem and provided some, but not all of the information needed to solve it. When you showed Wesson Asher the empty cup he had to infer that the treat must be in the other cup.

This is not as easy as it sounds because Wesson Asher was also attracted to the empty cup, for the simple reason that you touched it. It looks like Wesson Asher switched back and forth between strategies in this game, sometimes making an inference and choosing the correct cup, and sometimes relying on your social cues. Either way, this shows impressive flexibility.

Wesson Asher is quite the clever dog! Once again, when faced with a difficult decision during this game he consistently chose one side. Kudos to him for developing this unique strategy.

Physical Reasoning Game

In this game, Wesson Asher demonstrated an excellent understanding of a fundamental property of the physical world - that one solid object cannot pass through another solid object.

Wesson Asher had to infer that a piece of paper on an angle meant that a treat was hidden behind it. This talent would come in handy in the wild, since animals often have to keep track of objects that become hidden. To find these objects, animals have to maintain a representation of the object and predict where it might appear.

Humans intuitively understand basic physical phenomena like the solidity principle - it looks like Wesson Asher does too.

Even though many dogs may struggle with physical properties like gravity, this doesn't stop them from thoroughly enjoying a game of fetch.

Next Steps

We hope you've enjoyed reading Wesson Asher's Dognition Profile and feel that you've gained perspective on how he sees the world!

You can easily share Wesson Asher's Profile snapshot, letting your friends find out what you've learned about him!

You can also download and email or print Wesson Asher's profile report any time from your portal.

Of course, these five cognitive dimensions are only part of the picture; the magic of your relationship with Wesson Asher is how you spend your time together. To that end, a Dognition membership gives you on-going games and tips that will help provide even more insight into what makes Wesson Asher tick and how to act on that information.

As a member, each month you'll receive:

A new game that will shed light on another aspect of how Wesson Asher thinks and sees the world.
Tips and activities prepared for Wesson Asher from canine training experts, based on how Wesson Asher sees the world.
Exclusive offers from Dognition partners, including brands such as Kong and Purina ONE.
New findings about how all dogs think and how Wesson Asher's strategies compare.

At the same time, by subscribing to Dognition you and Wesson Asher are contributing to the world's knowledge about all dogs. This allows us to tackle fresh questions -- how do certain breeds think compared to others? To what extent do memory skills decline by age? Are female dogs any more empathic than male dogs? And many more.

What questions would you like answered? We'd love to hear any feedback from you on that or anything else related to Dognition. Contact us any time at hello@dognition.com.

Woof!

The Dognition Team

Top

Download your printable PDF Report!