They’re quite smart, highly social and very expressive.
Does this mean that dogs might have an unrealized ability to, in effect, directly talk to humans? A new study by UC San Diego and the school’s collaborators suggests there’s more reason than ever to pursue the question.
In a paper published Aug. 28 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers say that dogs trained with soundboard buttons were able to understand specific recorded words like “play” and “outside,” and in the context they were spoken.
They could do so without physical or verbal cues.
“The dogs did the appropriate thing in response to hearing the word,” said Federico Rossano, a UCSD cognitive scientist and the senior author on the paper.
“It is a first step toward being able to assess whether dogs understand what they’re doing when they press those buttons,” he said.
Rossano was referring to simple and widely available soundboards that typically have round buttons with a word or symbol on top. The buttons play a prerecorded word when pressed.
In recent years, many everyday people have been training their dogs to use the soundboards, repeatedly exposing animals to a variety of words. In some cases, the dogs will press a button after being asked a question by a person, such as, “Do you want to go outside?”
In other instances, the dogs will press a button without being prompted, seeming to express a conscious interest or desire.