Canine Cognition Lab at the University of Toronto

Super excited about this project with Elisa Felsche, many years and collaborators in the making, looking at abstract reasoning abilities in children, capuchin monkeys, and chimpanzees! Out now in Cognition!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027724000076

We asked if preschool children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys can consider abstract patterns to guide their foraging behaviour in a sampling task. Children and, to a more limited extent, chimpanzees demonstrated their sensitivity to abstract patterns in the evidence. In contrast, capuchin monkeys did not exhibit conclusive evidence for the ability of abstract knowledge formation.

To all of our canine scientists and dog people of Toronto, we have two big announcements to share with you.

The first is that a study many of you participated in has been published! Our investigation of dogs' understanding of solidity is now available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-021-01568-3. Thank you very much for making this work possible, and if you are having trouble accessing the article please let us know!

The second announcement is that our lab has moved to Brown University in Providence RI. We are wrapping up activities in Toronto and saying good bye to this amazing city. We have had the most wonderful experience with all of you in the Toronto dog community and cannot thank you enough for your support in making our research possible! We'll keep sharing news of publications of our Toronto work here, and the new Brown Dog Lab is going to be doing some online studies, so give them a follow to stay involved!
Thank you again from the bottom of our hearts, we appreciate all of you more than we can say 🐶🥰

Hello friends! One of our colleagues at Texas Tech University has a survey study for dog people living in Canada and the US 🐶 Help out TTU Human-Animal Interaction Lab by participating in the survey below!

Click on the following link to participate in this new Texas Tech research survey: https://bit.ly/dogvethandling

The survey should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.
Please share!

We're launching a new survey for dog and cat guardians, to understand more about how humans relate to their pets! If you're caring for a dog or cat, take a few minutes to participate in our brief study 🐶🐱
Get started with the survey here: https://bit.ly/3hKerYL
Please get in touch with any questions ([email protected]), and many thanks for helping us understand human-animal relationships! 😊🙏

Publication announcement! We examined the question of how dogs follow human pointing gestures that are accurate or inaccurate (i.e., accurate at indicating where treats are hidden) and found that they don't respond to these points in the same way!
We're thrilled to share this new paper with all of you, and want to say many, many thanks to the volunteers that participated in and contributed to this project.
Follow this link to read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-021-01493-5

In these frightening and uncertain times, it can help to think about something positive - like puppies. Our Principal Investigator (Dr Daphna Buchsbaum) was interviewed by the CBC to discuss some fun facts that may surprise first-time dog parents.

Check out the article below, and stay safe everyone!

Puppies get pimples! Plus 9 more facts that might surprise first-time dog parents | CBC Life Teething, temper tantrums and everything else that could come along with raising a puppy.

Dear doggos and dog people of Toronto,

We have suspended in-lab research while our community copes with the health concerns surrounding COVID-19 😔
If you've already filled out the questionnaire but haven't been contacted yet, we're so sorry, we don't know when we'll be able to start running studies and have the opportunity to meet you and your pup.
If you have any questions feel free to get in touch at [email protected].
We hope that we will be able to resume our studies in the not too distant future, and until then, thank you all for understanding and stay safe!

Hi! My name is Ece, and I’m a third year student here at UofT, pursuing a double major in computer science and cognitive science and a minor in psychology. I’m really excited to work in the Canine Cognition Lab this year. My interest in canine cognition is mainly rooted in my admiration and my love for my best friend Ruby, who has always amazed me with his social cognition and emotional intelligence. In my free time I sing, lift, and try to raise mental health awareness.

Very exciting update! Our previously published study on gravity bias in dogs has received the Frank Beach Award for the Best Paper in the Journal of Comparative Psychology in 2019. Thank you to all of the amazing dogs and people who helped make this happen. You can check out the abstract for the paper at the link below, and find the full paper on our website!

Link to the full paper from our website:http://www.cocodevlab.com/uploads/1/0/8/1/108120157/tecwyn_buchsbaum2018_preprint__2_.pdf

Link to the paper abstract: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-54181-001?fbclid=IwAR1iWoFgHPB1VMHilP96qtyPsZj1iSCNIBZqsMhtJBbE9TG3RnYVTdCOEfc

What factors really influence domestic dogs’ (Canis familiaris) search for an item dropped down a diagonal tube? The tubes task revisited. It has been suggested that domestic dogs—like young human children—have a “gravity bias”; they expect an unsupported object to fall straight down, regardless of any obstacles that redirect or halt its path. In the diagonal tube task, this bias is revealed by a persistent tendency to search t...

Congratulations to our lab manager Maddie Pelgrim for presenting her work at the International Canine Science Conference!

Amazing job by our lab manager, Maddie, for her talk at the International Canine Science Conference in Phoenix! You made the lab proud! 🎉