New study reveals how dogs understand human language

If you are a dog, you think that your four-legged friend may know exactly what you mean when you use certain words or phrases, for example "toy", "car" or even "who is the good boy ? "(He is) -you may be right.

A new study by scientists at Emory University and published in Frontiers in Neuroscience on Monday suggests that dogs have a basic understanding of the words they have learned to associate with objects. After training 12 very good dogs of different breeds over a period of two to six months, in order to discern two toys according to their respective names, the researchers then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine they had the fundamental ability to make a difference. human speech, they learned to remember and new or unknown words.

"Many dog ​​owners think their dogs know what some words mean, but there is not really any scientific evidence to prove it," said Ashley Prichard, Ph.D. candidate at Emory's psychology department. and first author of the study, said in a statement. But rather than simply believing in their words that their dog is clever or, on the contrary, "an adorable idiot," the researchers chose to "retrieve the data from the dogs themselves."

In order to differentiate the two training objects used for each dog, the researchers selected a soft object and another of different texture. for example, a stuffed animal and a creaking toy. Using what the study describes as the "hunter's protocol", dogs were then trained to retrieve objects based on the names of these objects (eg, "piggy" or "monkey" ). The dogs were then rewarded with treats and praise for properly associating an object with his name.

Owners of the participating dogs worked with them to identify each object about 10 minutes a day until they "demonstrate their ability to distinguish between the object driven and the new object. They then progressed towards a training in discrimination between the two objects involved.

During the fMRI tests, the main owners of the dogs were placed in front of them when the machine was opened. The four types of tests used for the study included expected, unexpected, pseudo-words and awards, all of which were presented semi-randomly. For example, during the scheduled tests, the owners indicated the name of the object that a puppy had been trained to remember five times at a speed of once per second before showing the # 39, object to the dog. In unexpected attempts, the owner repeated the name of the trained object, but then showed the dog a new object he had not been trained to recognize (a Barbie doll, a wooden train whistle or a yellow hat, for example). And in the lawsuits in pseudo-words, the owners repeat words of gibberish, for example. "Thozz", "sowt", "bodmick" and "stru", all of which were selected with the help of a pseudo-word generator – before then showing the dogs new objects.

Compared to previous researches, this study is exciting as it aims to determine if dogs can understand human speech, rather than words combined with intonation and / or gestures, said in a statement the neuroscientist said. Emory Gregory Berns, author of the report.

"We know that dogs have the ability to address at least some aspects of human language because they can learn to follow verbal commands," he said. "Past research, however, suggests that dogs can rely on many other clues to follow a verbal command, such as the look, gestures, and even the emotional expressions of their owners."

If you wonder how these people managed to get dogs into the MRI machine, the 12 doggos all participated in training for other fMRI experiments. But the guys, these dogs "have demonstrated the ability to stay still during training and sweeping," again emphasizing how good they are.

The researchers observed that dogs displayed greater cerebral activation of invented words than those for which they had been trained. Areas of the brain in which dogs showed increased neuronal activity differed in some puppies compared to others, but the researchers explained that this could be attributed to differences in the size and shape of dogs' brains with respect to their race and to their cognitive abilities. Interestingly, it's the opposite of how the human brain reacts to words it does not know.

"We expected dogs to make a neurological distinction between words they know and words they do not know," Prichard said. "What is amazing is that the result is opposite to that of research on humans – people usually show greater neural activation for known words than new words."

In the end, researchers believe that dogs can react to "new words" as they do because they know we want them to understand us and that they want to please us – or perhaps, as Berns said, "also receive praise or food".

Even more evidence that even though dogs can eat their own shit, they are still very good.