You say, “go get your Frisbee.” Does your dog really understand, the way a person would? A Hungarian study says yes.
“Sit.” “Stay.” Lots of dogs understand and respond accordingly. But what about more complicated requests, such as to fetch a particular object. Many of our dogs will do this, but how, exactly, are they processing this request? Do they form a mental picture in their minds upon hearing the name of an object? Doing so would suggest a deeper grasp of language, like humans have.
A New Study Shows That Dogs Can Associate Words With Specific Objects
A new study out of Hungary says that’s exactly what’s happening. Researchers found that dogs can learn to associate words with specific objects—something called ‘referential understanding’ that had been unproven in scientific study of dogs until now.
“When we are talking about objects, objects are external to the dogs, and dogs have to learn that words refer, they stand for something that is external to them,” said Marianna Boros, a cognitive neuroscientist and co-lead author of the study conducted by the Department of Ethology of the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest.
“Researchers found that dogs can learn to associate words with specific objects—something called ‘referential understanding.’”
How the Study Worked
The peer-reviewed study, published in March in the scientific journal Current Biology, involved 18 dogs. Participating dog owners played an audio clip saying the name of their dog’s toy and then showed the dog an object. Sometimes the word and the image would match, and other times they wouldn’t. A non-invasive EEG procedure using electrodes attached to the dogs’ heads measured brain activity and registered brain waves.
The Results (Dogs are Amazing)
“We expected that if a dog really understands the meaning of the object’s word, it will expect to see that object. And if the owner shows a different one, there will be a so-called surprise reaction in the brain,” Boros said. “And this is exactly what we found.”
When the dogs were shown an object that matched the word, a different brain pattern was seen than when it didn’t match, suggesting the canines formed a mental image of the object based upon hearing the word for it.
Cognitive neuroscientist and co-lead author of the study Lilla Magyari notes that other animals have demonstrated some referential understanding of language, but in those cases, the animals had been trained to do so.
Dogs, on the other hand, appear to simply possess the ability without training, perhaps due to our 30,000-year co-evolution. More proof of how amazing our canine friends are!
