Whether dogs truly understand the words we say -- as opposed to things like tone and context clues -- is a question that has long perplexed owners, and so far science hasn't been able to deliver clear answers.
A new brain wave study published in Current Biology suggests that hearing the names of their favourite toys actually activates dogs' memories of those objects.
Yelling"Go get the stick!" and having a dog successfully bring the object back doesn't conclusively prove they know what the word"stick" means, for example. After analysing the EEG recordings, the team found different brain patterns when dogs were shown matching versus mismatched objects. "We found the effect in 14 dogs," co-first author Marianna Boros told AFP, proving the ability is not confined to"a few exceptional dogs." Even the four that"failed" may have simply been tested on the wrong words, she added.Holly Root-Gutteridge, a dog behaviour scientist at the University of Lincoln in England, told AFP that the ability to fetch specific toys by name had previously been deemed a"genius" quality.
The paper"provides further evidence that dogs might understand human vocalizations much better than we usually give them credit for," added Federico Rossano, a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego.
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