Dogs can associate words with objects, study reveals
Our four-legged companions can recognize words that prompt actions that will be no surprise to dog owners who tell their pets to 'sit' or 'fetch'
"While there have been behavioral reports, these were always exceptional cases. Our study is the first where we claim that this is a species-wide capacity."
During the study, dog owners said words for objects their pets knew.
Then, in some cases, they presented the dog with an object that matched the word, while in other cases the object didn't match.
The results found that the patterns in the dogs' brains when the words matched the objects differed from when they didn't.
This is similar to what can be observed in humans.
"Dogs can understand that words stand for things... So they activate mental representations and link the meaning of the word to a mental representation, not just the context," said Boros.
The researchers plan to examine whether this ability to understand referential language is specific to dogs or if it is also present in other mammals.
