Is Dawn Dense?

it's a mixture of all of them imo.

she's aware of what love is as she points out buneary's crush on pikachu and when brock comments on how she shouldn't fight love she sarcastically comments "you think this is LOVE!?". this implies that she knows the difference between having a crush and experiencing true love.

yet, in the arc with lyra, lyra asks dawn if dawn sees ash as a potential boyfriend and dawn immediately freaks out at such an alarming question and retaliates with "I never really thought of it" lyra then says "i would think that should be the first thing on your mind" then dawn proceeds to look at ash AND PONDER LYRA'S COMMENTARY. she's basically considering what lyra says until she's interrupted. this is because, as she said, she hadn't really given her love life much thought. she prefers to pay attention to someone else's love life as opposed to her own. (Glameow x Meowth and pikachu x buneary for example)

so yes. she's dense, but she's also very aware of the subject itself. She's also aware of how boy emotions work. proof of this is seen in the hearthome contest when she teases kenny about her dress, while in one of her later contests lyra asks ash if he thinks dawn looks good and he says that she does. dawn doesn't really react to this the way lyra was hoping for, causing lyra to get disappointed. this shows that dawn is VERY good at giving out signals, yet she struggles to pick them up. and since she's dense to ash, her signals are more dormant and not as obvious as her messing with kenny.

Hikari is basically a female version of Ash so of course she is dense when it comes to her own feelings, she's like him in a lot of ways but not 100% the same. She's not aware of her own feelings like Satoshi. Even to the point that Hikari would be an Amourshipper if she were to meet Serena and knows of Serena's obvious crush. But I think until she realizes her own feelings. Like Satoshi, she's just a naturally friendly person and willing to make friends with everyone.