New Study Says Dogs Understand More Words Than Humans Think
When you tell your dog to go get the ball and they actually return with their ball you may think that these know to do this because of repetition. But there may be more going on behind those puppy dog eyes than we realize.
A new study from the ethology department at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest Hungary has made the surprising discovery that dogs generally also know that certain words “stand for” certain objects.
The new study in the journal Current Biology titled “Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs ” the researchers wanted to investigate dogs’ understanding of object words by measuring their brain activity using non-invasive electroencephalogram. The idea was that this might offer a more-sensitive measure of their understanding of language.
Related: New Study Has Interesting Findings About How Dogs Hear Their Owners
Psychology Today explains that in the testing the scientists recruited dog owners whose dogs knew at least five object words. After the dog was made comfortable and fitted with external electrodes, the owner would say the words for toys their dogs knew and then show them an object. Sometimes, they presented the matching toy, while other times they showed an object that didn’t match. The brain recordings showed a different pattern when the dogs were presented with a matching object versus one that didn't match, and these characteristic patterns occurred in a comparable time window as similar patterns in humans. In addition, there was a greater difference in brain patterns for words that dogs knew better, adding further evidence that the dogs truly understood the words.
So this could be an interesting experiment you could conduct with your own dogs at home, by placing five of their favorite objects they are familiar with by name and asking them to retrieve each one. I'm going to try this with my own dog to see if he knows the difference between ball and his baby , which is a stuffed dinosaur.
How to Help Your Dog Learn Words
As with any dog training, repetition and treats are key.
You always want to keep any training with your dog short and fun so they associate these training sessions with positive feelings.
You can start by showing them a toy and teaching your dog its name, as in 'ball' or 'bear.' When you start this training only have one object available so your dog doesn't get confused or distracted. Show your pet the toy and use an excited voice to say what it is.
Then you can throw the toy, say bring me the toy (by name) and when your dog does what you ask, give him a treat. You can do this with certain objects as your dog learns the words for them.
This is such an interesting study. It's always so cool to learn what's going on in our fur baby's minds.
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