Researchers have shown that dogs possess a number of "metacognitive" skills - in particular, they are aware of when they do not have enough information to solve a problem and will actively seek more information, similar to primates. To investigate this, the researchers created a test in which dogs had to find a reward - a toy or food - behind one of the two fences. They found that the dogs looked at additional information significantly more often if they had not seen where the reward was hidden.
In some cases, the dog could see where the reward was placed, while in other cases, the dog couldn't. The researchers then analyzed how many times the dogs looked through an opening in the fence before choosing an option. The question was whether, like chimpanzees and humans, the dog would "see" through the opening if he or she had not seen where the reward was placed. This would indicate that the dog was aware that he or she didn't know where the reward was — a metacognitive skill — and would try to get more information before choosing a fence. The dogs “checked” more often if they didn't know where the reward was hidden
The researchers found that the dogs were significantly more likely to inquire about the reward when they hadn't seen where it was placed. Controlling, however, has not always made the dogs much more successful. In the first variant, with food or a toy as a reward, when dogs checked they were more likely to be correct than when they didn't check. However, in the second variant, with high or low value food as a reward, even when dogs checked it, they were no more correct than one would expect based on chance. The researchers hypothesize that this could be due to inhibition issues — the dogs get so excited about finding the reward that they can't stop approaching the nearest fence, even when they've seen the reward probably isn't there.
In addition, the dogs in the first variant looked at the toy more often than at the food, suggesting that they are flexible in their search rather than just routine behavior. However, in the second variant, they did not look at the high-quality food more often, although they were more likely to look for it. Overall, the researchers concluded that the dogs, while exhibiting some degree of search flexibility, are not as flexible as primates.
In a third variation of the test, the dogs could always see where a food reward was placed, but they were delayed from 5 seconds to 2 minutes before being allowed to retrieve the reward. Interestingly, the dogs did not check more often with a longer time delay, even though they were slightly less successful. “It is possible that this was due to a 'ceiling effect', as dogs in this variation generally selected the correct fence in 93% of the studies, so the pressure to seek additional information was low,” the researcher suggests.
