Welcome to the Canine Cognition Lab @ The University of Toronto! ​
We are a group of researchers who are interested in understanding how dogs think and learn.

How does your dog learn?

Our Canine Cognition Lab explores dogs’ learning and reasoning abilities. We investigate dog’s learning in a variety of contexts including dogs’ physical problem solving abilities (e.g., how to get treats out of puzzles) and their understanding of social information (e.g., following a pointing gesture or learning from a demonstration). Our research takes the form of short, interactive games and training exercises that are designed to be fun and engaging to dogs. We record dogs’ actions when interacting with people, toys and puzzles, and the choices they make, to learn more about their understanding of the world. With your consent, your dog will be videotaped during the study. The session will last for 30-60 minutes. Our findings help us understand how our canine companions minds work, which can also help us to improve programs for dogs who are trained to help humans.

Lab Affiliation

The Canine Cognition Lab is affiliated with the Computational Cognitive Development Lab at the University of Toronto's Department of Psychology. To find out more about the human development research currently going on, visit our sister lab, the Child Cognition Lab.