Can Dogs Understand The Meaning Of Words?
We know that animals have the capacity to understand some aspects of human language, because they are able to follow verbal cues. But, can dogs understand the meaning of words? Do they really know what a “ball” or a “squirrel” is? – read our Holidays4Dogs article to find out more about this fascinating subject.
Dogs are pretty good at grasping familiar words like ‘sit’ ‘come here’ and ‘walkies’. It shows that dogs can learn to associate words with specific objects and actions.
However, there is evidence to suggest that dogs also take into account facial expressions, tone of voice and body language when interpreting human words.
Ultimately, they are combining several observations to make sense of what we are trying to communicate to them. But – do they understand the actual meaning of words?
Can they generalise? When we say, ” where’s your ball?” – is it just that ragged old tennis ball they associate the word with? Or, do they know ‘ball’, can mean any spherical toy?
What does science say?
Many of us believe that dogs can understand words and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this. But, is there any scientific data to support the theory that dogs understand human language? Research has previously found that dogs don’t just rely on verbal sounds, but on visual clues too – like body language and gestures. In fact, in the past, it has been found – dogs are better able to follow visual gestures, than verbal cues.
Other research has focused on the brain activity of dogs when they hear the spoken word.
In a recent study by researchers in Hungary, evidence was discovered that suggests dogs can understand the, “referential nature of object words”.
18 dogs and their owners participated in the studies. The owners brought along five objects that were well known to their dogs such as balls, soft toys and frisbees. During the tests, owners were asked to say the words of the toys and either hold up the correct object, or a mismatched one. For example, an owner might say “where is your ball?”, but hold up a frisbee.
Throughout the tests, the dog’s brain activity was monitored using non-invasive electroencephalography (or EEG, for short!). Blips in brain activity were recorded when the dogs saw objects which either clashed, or matched, with the known object words. Results showed that dogs were capable of forming a mental representation of objects. This is similar to human tests, where an understanding of an object is either confirmed, or invalidated, by the object shown.
The devil isn’t in the detail.
Other studies such as one carried out in 2020, show that dogs can’t distinguish the details of human speech. During tests, dogs listened to three types of words and brain activity was measured. These consisted of – known words the dogs were familiar with, similar sounding words and nonsense words that sounded nothing like the words the dogs knew.
When similar but incorrect words were used – which sounded much like familiar words – the dogs could not distinguish between the two. This may explain why the average dog can only learn a few words and do so in a non-phonetic way. In other ways, if you ask your dog “lie down” or “buy clowns” – chances are you’ll get the same result.
Play on words.
We have seen this in one of our office dogs Peggy.
As her owner sang one Christmas – “Oh, Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree”…Peggy began tilting her head from side to side because she seemed to know the words. Then her owner realised and the penny dropped! “Crisps” and “treats”. Well known words to Peggy-pea!
Dogs do listen to words, so talking to your dog is very beneficial. While word association is probably a better interpretation of how dogs understand language, some dogs can learn lots of words.
Chaser, deemed to be one of the cleverest dogs in the world, learned over 1,000 words and provided a pivotal point in the way we think about animal intelligence. Sadly, Chaser died in 2019, but her legacy lives on.
Does your dog understand words? Please hop over to our Facebook page and tell us more – we’d love to hear your stories.
