Does Your Dog Understand What You Say? Researchers Say "Yes!"
by Jane Webb(31)
When our dogs hear the word "walk" they get excited and run to the door. Is it the tone of our voices as we say it? Or do our dogs really understand what the word means? I always thought a dog could learn its name and, maybe a few other words, but it turns out the pups may be brainier than I give them credit for.
Rico, a border collie, a breed known for being intelligent, was taken to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics for some experiments. The goal was to find out just how much dogs can understand.
Rico was placed in a room and given the command to fetch an object he knew from another room. The test was perfomed with 10 different items and Rico always brought the correct item back. So, researchers added new items Rico was unfamiliar with one at a time. An astounding 70% of the time Rico brought back the correct item. A process called fast-mapping was used to see if Rico could remember the names of items he was onlyl exposed to one time. After one month, Rico was brought back to see if he could remember what he had correctly done in an earlier experiment. An item he correctly retrieved the month before was placed in a room with four new and four previously recognized objects. Rico remembered about 50% of the time. The cool thing about this is Rico's language recognition is about the same as that of a 3 year old child.
Dogs cannot grasp the concept of abstract words. When you tell your pooch how much you love them, the tail is probably wagging from the attention or the tone of voice. But, the next time you mention "car ride" or "treat", consider that your dog knows what you are saying and waiting for you to deliver the goods!
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/dogs-understand-words1.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1952976
Article submitted Saturday, June 13, 2009 & read 517 times.
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