Dogs do understand humans, new study indicates

Washington. Until now, science has not been able to clearly answer whether dogs are really capable of understanding the meaning of the words that are said to them, but new research released this Friday advances the topic.

The study, published in the scientific journal Current Biologysuggests that hearing the names of their favorite toys triggers dogs’ memories.

“It’s not so obvious that dogs know what a ‘ball’ is,” he explained to the Afp co-author Lilla Magyari of Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary.

With a couple of famous exceptions, these animals have done poorly in laboratory tests in which they are required to search for objects after hearing their names.

Many experts have argued that it is not so much what is said to them but how and when it is said that motivates them and that they react to particular sounds with learned behavior.

Brain waves

Magyari and his colleagues applied a non-invasive brain imaging technique to 18 dogs in their laboratory in Budapest.

The test involved placing electrodes on the animals’ heads to monitor their brain activity.

Their owners pronounced different words for the toys they were most familiar with. “Kun-kun, look, the ball!”, for example, they said to one and then they showed him an object corresponding to that word and another that did not match.

After analyzing the recordings, the team found different brain patterns when dogs were shown matching and non-matching objects with the associated words.

This experimental setup is accepted as evidence of “semantic processing” or understanding the meaning of something even by humans.

“We found that it worked in 14 dogs, which shows that the effect we observed at the group level is not just due to a few exceptional dogs,” he explained to the Afp Marianna Boros, co-author of the work.

Case closed?

Holly Root-Gutteridge, a dog behaviorist at Lincoln University in England, who was not involved in the research, told the Afp The ability to search for specific toys by name was previously considered a “cool” quality in a dog.

The new study “shows that a range of dogs learn the names of objects in terms of brain response even if they don’t demonstrate it behaviorally,” he said, adding that this was “another blow to the idea that humans possess absolutely exceptional”.

The paper “provides more evidence that dogs could understand human vocalizations much better” than previously thought, added Federico Rossano, a cognitive scientist at the University of California San Diego.

But not all experts were equally enthusiastic.

Clive Wynne, a dog behaviorist at Arizona State University, told the Afp who was “divided” by the findings.

“I think the paper falls flat when it wants to make a blanket claim that they have demonstrated what they call ‘semantic understanding'” in dogs, he said.

“Would Pavlov be surprised by these results?” he asked, alluding to the famous Russian scientist who demonstrated that dogs could be conditioned to salivate when they heard a bell signaling meal time. “I don’t think so,” he replied.