Dogs do understand us, says new study

BUDAPEST

Whether dogs truly understand the words we say, as opposed to things like tone and context clues, is a question that has long perplexed owners, and so far science hasn't been able to deliver clear answers.

But a new brain wave study published on March 22 in Current Biology suggests that hearing the names of their favorite toys actually activates dogs' memories of those objects.

With a couple of famous exceptions, dogs have fared poorly on lab tests requiring them to fetch objects after hearing their names, and many experts have argued it isn't so much what we say but rather how and when we say things that pique our pooches' interest.

Even scientists who concede that dogs do pay attention to our speech have said that, rather than really understanding what words stand for, they are reacting to particular sounds with a learned behavior.

In the new paper, Lilla Magyari of the Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary and colleagues applied a non-invasive brain imaging technique to 18 dogs brought to their lab in Budapest.

The test involved taping electrodes to the dogs' heads to monitor their brain activity. Their owners said words for toys they were most familiar with.

After analyzing the EEG recordings, the team found different brain patterns when dogs were shown matching versus mismatched objects.

This experimental setup has been used for decades in humans, including babies, and is accepted as evidence of "semantic processing," or understanding of meaning.

The test also had the benefit of not requiring the dogs to fetch something in order to prove their knowledge.

"We found the effect in 14 dogs," co-first author Marianna Boros told AFP, proving the ability is not confined to "a few exceptional dogs." Even the four that "failed" may have simply been tested on the wrong words, she added.

Holly Root-Gutteridge, a dog behavior scientist at the University of Lincoln in England, told AFP that the ability to fetch specific toys by name had previously been deemed a "genius" quality.

But the new study "shows that a whole range of dogs are learning the names of the objects in terms of brain response even if they don't demonstrate it behaviorally," said Root-Gutteridge, adding it was "another knock for humanity's special and distinct qualities."

The paper "provides further evidence that dogs might understand human vocalizations much better than we usually give them credit for," added Federico Rossano, a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego.