Humans can communicate various instructions to dogs without using actual words—simply by modulating the tone of their voice, a new study from ELTE University’s Department of Ethology shows. By repeating the nonsense syllable ‘bü’ in different intonations, humans successfully signaled “Yes,” “No,” “Here,” and “There” and, remarkably, dogs responded correctly, despite receiving no prior training. The findings reveal ancient acoustic codes, interpretable across species, that predate language itself. The study was published in Cognition.
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Were these researchers under the impression that dogs actually understood English before the experiment?
I can tell my dog to “sit” in English and he (sometimes) does.
I can use the same exact tone that say “sit” in Spanish or Japanese and he absolutely doesn’t understand it one bit.
Yes, I believe dogs recognize vocal patterns above and beyond tone.
Your dog understands the sound you make and your associated intention when you say “sit” in English because that’s what they’ve been exposed to the most. Do it enough times in Spanish and Japanese and they’ll eventually figure those out, too. That doesn’t mean the dog understands how to say “sit” in three different languages, it means they understand you’ve got three different “sounds” that mean you want them to sit.
Is that not just understanding language though? I could say the exact same thing about myself.
No, because there’s no “understanding” of language going on here. The dogs are responding to a trained stimulus. I could train a dog to sit when told to stand and they wouldn’t be confused at all because it isn’t the word itself they’re interpreting and responding to.
ETA: Downvoters need to stop anthropomorphizing their animals. It’s not healthy for you or them.
I still would say the same could be said for people. If from birth I was told that stand means sit, and I was raised in that manner, my response to being told to stand would be to sit, language is overall a response to a trained stimulus. It’s a very complex and interwoven response to trained stimulus but I am not interpreting the word itself, I am responding to what I have been trained that the word means. When I learn a new word I don’t respond based on what it means without having it demonstrated or explained.
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That’s because the word sit in Japanese doesn’t sound remotely close to the word sit in English. But if you just kind of Simlish at him in the same kind of tone you’ll get a similar response.
Most dogs can understand vernacular language. If an average 3-year-old would understand a majority of the words your dog probably does too.
My dog is scared of his own farts, he is definitely not as intelligent as a 3-year-old human. One time he refused to come in out of the rain because the door was already open and because he hadn’t seen me open it, it must be closed in his mind.
The researchers were actually dogs so
yesnoyesThey even were in a lab coat