Dogs and Words

How many people here think their dog understands every word you say? Phew, I can’t see through all the hands waving in the air.

No question – dogs are expert communicators. They hear “Wanna go for a walk?” and start bouncing. They hear “What happened to the kitchen garbage?” and they slink around. They signal “Let’s play!” by lowering their heads and shoulders and sticking their butts up in the air. That last even qualifies as a fancy “meta-signal,” a signal that changes the meaning of what follows it. A play bow “explains” that ensuing growls, snaps, and pounces mean the very opposite of “This is war.” I’ve lost count of how many articles I’ve already devoted to canine body language.

As for dogs and words, dogs absolutely do learn that certain sounds coming out of our mouths have meaning. “Sit” = “Plunk your butt on the floor and you might get a cookie,” “Come” = “Run over to me as fast as your little legs will carry you [and you might get a cooki,” “Ball” designates that very slightly squishy round object that is so much fun to chase.

Language, though, is another story. When we use language, we combine sounds in different ways – sometimes in fixed patterns, but often not: “Who left the rotten fish on top of the microwave last week?” You understood that, even though you’d never seen those words combined that way before. Dogalini would not.

Can Dogalini understand any “language” at all? Probably yes, but it’s an uphill climb. In a study by Daniela Ramos and Cesar Ades, of the University of São Paulo, a pet dog named Sophia was taught the meanings of some words (“ball,” “fetch,” “bottle,” and “point,” for instance) and was able to respond correctly to combinations of the words.

Sophia even responded correctly when the order of the words was reversed – for instance, she fetched the ball whether she heard “ball fetch” or “fetch ball.”

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Don’t hold your breath waiting for Dogalini to master this.

But here’s the thing. Ramos and Ades practiced with Sophia 2 or 3 times a day, 3 to 6 days a week. In each phase of the training, they did more than 100 practice sessions, each with 20 to 40 reps. Though Sophia did much better than chance, she never responded correctly 100 percent of the time — at her best, she scored 80 percent. (The researchers made some technical mistakes in their training; maybe Sophia would have done better otherwise.) And when she was faced with a new combination of words she had already learned, her performance fell apart completely. Perhaps she could not respond flexibly because she had already learned these words in an inflexible pattern.

What about us? When we communicate with our dogs, we’re often using single words, or consistent patterned sounds (“Wannagoforawalk?”) that might as well be single words. We’re also using our own body language and tone of voice. Ramos and Ades were careful to factor out these other kinds of cues, so Sophia had only words to go on. Next time you’re tempted to get angry at your dog for seemingly disobeying or ignoring you, remember Sophia, and how hard she had to work to learn a few two-word sentences. Let’s not punish our dogs for failing to be human. They’re brilliant, valuable, and worthy of our care and respect just as they are: dogs.
 

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock

Bottom Photo by Antoni Font/Sebastià i Jaume Mathevat (Fotografia de la pàgina) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons