[ad_1]
You probably think your dog is the smartest (and cutest!) When learning to sit or give a paw. But most dogs can only grasp a limited number of words in their life, and a new study may help explain why.
The study found that dogs’ brains cannot distinguish words that differ by a single sound of speech, such as “dig” versus “dog”, or “sit” versus “together”. This makes dogs similar to human infants, which also cannot distinguish words with similar sounds. But around the age of 14 to 20 months, babies usually begin to learn that every sound of a word counts (that is, “dog” and “dig” are different words), which helps. their vocabulary to soar, the authors said.
It seems that dogs never understand these distinctions. “Dogs may not take care of all the details of the sound of speech when listening to words,” studied lead author Attila Andics, from the department of ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, said in a press release. “Further research may reveal if this could be a reason that prevents dogs from building important vocabulary.”
Related: 7 surprising health benefits of owning a dog
For the study, published Tuesday, December 8 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers followed the brain waves of 17 very good dogs using a technique called electroencephalography (EEG). The study is one of the first to use EEG on awake dogs that do not have specific training. The dogs toured the lab with their owners, and once they got used to the new environment, they sat on a mattress with their owners, and the researchers attached electrodes to the dogs’ heads with duct tape. .
Then the dogs listened to pre-recorded words they knew (eg “sit”), as well as nonsense words that sounded similar (eg “sut”) and nonsense words that sounded very different (eg “bep” ).
Dogs’ brains could quickly distinguish words they knew from nonsense words that sounded very different (“sit” or “bep”). But their brains seemed to make no distinction between the words they knew and the nonsense words that differed only by a single sound of speaking (“sit” against “sut”). Researchers observed a similar trend in infants under 14 months of age.
It’s not that dogs can’t hear different sounds – studies have shown that dogs can distinguish between individual speech sounds (such as “d”, “o” and “g”). But they may have “attentional and processing biases” that prevent them from dealing with all the sounds of a word, they said.
Future studies with large numbers of participants and more word trials are needed to confirm the results, they said.
Originally posted on Live Science.
[ad_2]
Source link