Dogs learn words by overhearing conversations.
Dogs never cease to amaze us with remarkable abilities. Researchers have now discovered: Clever dogs learn words without any training – simply by listening.
Particularly intelligent dogs – at least those with a strong aptitude for language – can learn new words by casually eavesdropping on human conversations. These newly learned words can then be reliably associated with the corresponding objects. This complex socio-cognitive ability is comparable to that of toddlers around 18 months old.
The scientists investigated whether these “Genius Dogs” could learn new words even when no one spoke to them directly, only when they overheard their owners’ conversations. For comparison, the researchers also tested ordinary family dogs without an exceptional vocabulary in a second group.
The experimental setup
First, the owners introduced their dogs to two new toys and named them – for example, “Teddy” or “Balli” – over several days in short training sessions in which the animals were actively involved. Then, all the familiar and new toys were laid out in a different room, and the dogs were asked to retrieve the correct toy upon verbal command.
In a second trial, the dogs only heard the names of the new toys during a conversation between two people: The owners passed the objects to each other, named them, and looked at each other – the dog was present but not allowed to play and was sometimes separated by a barrier. Afterwards, the same recall test was performed: From a pool of familiar and new toys, the animals had to select the object that matched the new word.
What dogs actually understand
The gifted word learners performed remarkably well: In the first test rounds, they correctly selected up to 80 percent of the objects when directly taught, and even achieved success rates of up to 100 percent in the first attempts in the overhearing scenario. Overall, these dogs learned new word-object associations just as reliably when listening as when directly addressed – and could still remember them weeks later.
Ordinary family dogs, on the other hand, showed no systematic evidence of learning new object names simply by overhearing. The researchers conclude that “Gifted Word Learners” are rare, exceptional talents whose abilities are more akin to a toddler’s than to the average dog’s.
Social-cognitive peak performance
For a dog to extract new meaning from a human conversation, it must combine several skills: track glances, recognize where the speaker’s attention is focused, interpret their intentions, and, at the same time, filter out the relevant signal word from the flood of sounds.
The Hungarian study shows that these socio-cognitive processes – long considered specifically human – are at least present in rudimentary form in some dogs.
What dogs want to tell us with their eyes
Researchers argue that such abilities were probably present in evolution even before the development of complex language, and that language could then build upon these existing social skills. The millennia of domestication may have reinforced this trend in dogs: animals that were particularly good at reading human signals and intentions had a better chance of living with us and reproducing.