I was absolutely one of those owners who believed my dog could perfectly understand the English language, particularly the parts that pertained to the stuff she was most interested in, like food, walks, and her toys. She always seems to have an uncanny knack for rapidly learning the meanings of new concepts and the words associated with them. I could tell she was special compared to other dogs… and according to new research, I may have been correct in that assumption.
A study, published in the journal Science, led by cognitive scientist Shany Dror at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, found that so-called “Gifted Word Learner” dogs can pick up the names of objects just by overhearing human conversations. They don’t need formal training, you don’t need to teach them complex hand signals, and you don’t even need to speak the word to them directly to create a direct association with the sound you’re making in the object you’re holding.
The researchers studied 10 of these supposedly gifted dogs, most of them border collies, and asked their owners to casually talk about new toys with another person while the dog observed. After a few minutes a day over several days, the dogs were asked to retrieve the new toy from a pile of familiar toys. Seven of them succeeded at rates the researchers deem way above random chance, performing just as well when the owners explicitly taught them the toy’s name.
That’s impressive. It gets even more impressive: in another experiment by the same research team, dogs were exposed to a toy that was hidden in a bucket. While the toy was out of sight, the owners referred to it by name. Later, when asked to retrieve the toy from a group, five out of eight dogs correctly identified it. They still remembered it two weeks later when they were retested.
This kind of learning mirrors how human toddlers — some as young as 18 months — acquire language by overhearing adults. According to Shany Dror, the study’s lead researcher and a cognitive scientist at Eötvös Loránd University, the findings suggest that the mental processes behind this type of learning aren’t uniquely human, and that, under the right conditions, some dogs appear to learn words in ways that are eerily similar to how young children learn language.
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