Dogs can associate words with objects, study reveals

A small study of canine brain waves has found that dogs understand that some words refer to objects in a way similar to humans, offering insight into the way the minds of man’s best friends work. That our four-legged companions can recognize words that prompt actions will be no surprise to dog owners who tell their pets to “sit” or “fetch.”

 

However, the study, which analyzed brain activity in 18 dogs, provided evidence that they can activate a memory of an object when they hear its name. The study was conducted at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest and published in Current Biology.

 

“There has been a long debate on a non-human animal’s ability to understand words referentially,” said Marianna Boros who co-authored the study.

“While there have been behavioral reports, these were always exceptional cases. Our study is the first where we claim that this is a species-wide capacity.”

During the study, dog owners said words for objects their pets knew.

Then, in some cases, they presented the dog with an object that matched the word, while in other cases the object didn’t match.

The results found that the patterns in the dogs’ brains when the words matched the objects differed from when they didn’t.

This is similar to what can be observed in humans.

“Dogs can understand that words stand for things… So they activate mental representations and link the meaning of the word to a mental representation, not just the context,” said Boros.

The researchers plan to examine whether this ability to understand referential language is specific to dogs or if it is also present in other mammals.

Source: Reuters