dog intelligence

Dogs understand and visualize objects words

/ susanbulanda / Leave a comment

A very important study has illustrated that dogs understand instructional words as well as well as object words. An instructional word is what people commonly referred to as a command, such as sit. Object words are when a dog knows that the word represents an object. They can visualize the object when it is named whether the object is present or not. What this means is that dogs understand the meaning of some words the same as people do. Now researchers want to learn if other animals have the same capability. For an interesting video that shows a Border Collie named Chaser who illustrates this ability by identifying an object that he was told to fetch but was not taught the name of. He was able to identify all the other objects and pick out the one he was not taught the name of.  

Sue’s Note: Consider people who cannot speak, such as infants, who illustrate that they recognize objects even though they cannot say the name of the object.

Chaser finds “Darwin”

https://www.google.com/search?q=chaser+finds+darwin+video&oq=chaser+finds+darwin&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgBECEYoAEyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRirAtIBCTEwMjQ3ajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:44a17764,vid:IYcxH9mXQvc,st:0

Journal Reference:

  1. Marianna Boros, Lilla Magyari, Boglárka Morvai, Raúl Hernández-Pérez, Shany Dror, Attila Andics. Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs. Current Biology, 2024; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.029

Cite This Page:

Cell Press. “Your dog understands that some words ‘stand for’ objects.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 March 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240322145438.htm>.

Do dogs need training to understand human cues?

/ susanbulanda / 2 Comments

Dr. Anindita Bhadra of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, India, and colleagues studied stray dogs across several Indian cities to determine if dogs can understand human cues without training.

img051

They found that stray dogs that were not timid or shy, would respond to a strange human pointing to a bowl. If the dog was friendlier and less anxious, they approached the bowls that the tester pointed to about 80% of the time. This shows that the dogs not only recognized human body language but are able to understand complex gestures.

What the researchers were unable to tell is how much experience the stray dogs had with humans and was it positive or negative. Also unknown is if people had fed the dogs in the past, using a pointing motion to indicate that there was food available.

The study does mention that more research is needed to determine if the personality of the dog is a factor in their response to human pointing. But all in all, it is another piece of information that gives us insight into the mind of the dog.