Have you ever wondered if a dog really understands what someone is saying? For example, when a dog hears the word “bird”, it might perk up or even run to a window and look out. But, to the dog, does the word mean, “Something is happening!”, or does the dog picture a feathered winged animal perched on a tree? What is really happening in the dog’s brain when it hears a person say bird? That’s exactly what a team of researchers wanted to find out; so they conducted a study to looks at how dog’s brains react to human words.
Ashley Prichard, a Ph.D. candidate in Emory University’s Department of Psychology and first author of the study, said in a statement:
“Many dog owners think that their dogs know what some words mean, but there really isn’t much scientific evidence to support that. We wanted to get data from the dogs themselves — not just owner reports.”
In a recent study, researchers used brain imaging to probe how dogs process words they have been taught to associate with objects. They discovered that dogs have at least a rudimentary neural representation of meaning for words they’ve been taught and can differentiate words they’ve heard before from those they have not. The study has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Neuroscientist Gregory Berns, senior author of the study and author of the bestselling book “What it’s Like to be a Dog”, said:
“We know that dogs have the capacity to process at least some aspects of human language since they can learn to follow verbal commands. Previous research, however, suggests dogs may rely on many other cues to follow a verbal command, such as gaze, gestures and even emotional expressions from their owners.”
Berns is also the founder of the Dog Project – a project with the intent of better understand the dog’s mind. They’re even going so far as to scan the dog’s brains, to truly understand by seeing what is going on when they “think”. Part of the project involves training dogs to voluntarily enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and remain motionless during scanning, without restraint or sedation. It was the first project to accomplish such a task.
The Study
- The research focus was set to questions surrounding the brain mechanisms dogs use to differentiate between words, as well as what constitutes a word to a dog.
- 12 dogs of varying breeds were trained to retrieve two different objects, based on the objects’ names.
- Each trained dog lay in the fMRI scanner while the dog’s owner stood directly in front of the dog at the opening of the machine and said the names of the dog’s toys at set intervals, then showed the dog the corresponding toys.
- For example, Eddie, a golden retriever-Labrador mix, heard his owner say the words piggy or monkey, then his owner held up the matching toy. As a control, the owner then spoke gibberish words – such as bobbu and bodmick – then held up novel objects like a hat or a doll.
The Results
There was greater activation in auditory regions of the brain to the novel invented words compared to the trained words.
Prichard explained:
“We expected to see that dogs neurally discriminate between words that they know and words that they don’t. What’s surprising is that the result is opposite to that of research on humans — people typically show greater neural activation for known words than novel words.”
The Hypothesis
The dogs may show greater neural activation to a new, unknown word because they sense their owners want them to understand what they are saying, and they are trying to do so.
Berns explained:
“Dogs ultimately want to please their owners, and perhaps also receive praise or food… Dogs may have varying capacity and motivation for learning and understanding human words, but they appear to have a neural representation for the meaning of words they have been taught, beyond just a low-level Pavlovian response.”
Conclusion
This does not mean that spoken words are the most effective way for an owner to communicate with a dog. Prichard and Berns led another separate study, which was recently published in Scientific Reports, that revealed the neural reward system of dogs is more attuned to visual and to scent cues than to verbal ones.
Prichard said:
“When people want to teach their dog a trick, they often use a verbal command because that’s what we humans prefer. From the dog’s perspective, however, a visual command might be more effective, helping the dog learn the trick faster.”
