Most dogs don’t learn words unless they are extensively trained – but a team of researchers has found that some excellent pets have “exceptional skills”.
Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest observed two “talented” dogs: a Border Collie named Whiskey and a Yorkshire terrier named Vicky Nina, and tested their ability to learn a new word after hearing it just four times.
“We wanted to know under what conditions gifted dogs can learn new words. To test this, we exposed Whiskey and Vicky Nina to the new words in two different conditions, ”said Claudia Fugazza, the study’s first author and researcher in the ethology department, she said.
One scenario was a task based on exclusion and another was within a playful social context with its owners.
“It is important to note that in both conditions the dogs heard the name of the new toy only four times,” said Fugazza.
Presented with seven known toys and a new one, the dogs were able to select the new toy when given a new name. The researchers say this proves that dogs can choose by exclusion – when faced with a new word, they selected and recovered the only toy that did not have a known name.
However, when the researchers presented two newly named toys and asked them to retrieve one, they failed.
The research team also noted that both dogs were able to identify and retrieve newly named toys after hearing their owners’ names only four times during play.
“This rapid learning appears to be similar to the way human children acquire their vocabulary around 2-3 years of age,” said Adam Miklósi, head of the Department of Ethology and co-author of the study.
But not all dogs learn words that way.
In a test with 20 other dogs, the researchers found that none of them learned the new names of the toys. It was concluded that, without formal training, the ability to learn words quickly is very rare and is present only in some gifted dogs.
The researchers also found that Whiskey and Vicky Nina forgot the new toy names quickly and, in some tests, just over an hour after learning them.
The research was published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports.
Dogs are famous for their hearing ability and for hearing words and sounds well, as well as differentiating speech sounds. But experts say they don’t seem to pay attention to all the sounds of speech.