Language Learning in "Gifted" Dogs

Source: SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd.

I was recently attending an online conference focused on dog behavior and dog training. One of the speakers contended, "It has been shown that dogs can learn a lot of language—more than 1,000 words if we are willing to put in the time and effort to teach them."

That claim was clearly inspired by some widely publicized pieces of research. The first was a demonstration that Rico, a Border Collie, had learned over 200 words, and this was followed a few years later by the demonstration that John Pilley's Border Collie, Chaser, had a demonstrated vocabulary of over 1,000 words (mostly names for objects). Such studies left a general impression on the public, and even on many dog behavior researchers, that high-level linguistic abilities, similar to those shown by Chaser, were the norm for dogs.

Unfortunately, this is a rather broad over-generalization of canine language learning abilities. It is much like saying that since Mozart composed his first concerto at the age of 7, we can conclude that "It has been demonstrated that children have the ability to compose classical music if we are willing to put in the work can teach them." Mozart was not a typical child, and it has now become quite clear that Chaser was not a typical dog.

Expected language ability in dogs

My own research led me to the conclusion that the language learning of the average dog was roughly equivalent to that of a human child aged 2 to 2 ½ years, while the language learning ability of a "super dog" (defined as members of those breeds of dogs in the top 20 percent of working and obedience intelligence) was roughly equivalent to a human child aged 2 ½ to 3 years. That left me with the expectation that the average dog could learn about around 165 words (which would include signs and signals), while the super dogs could learn in excess of 250 words.

A research team at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, which included Adam Miklósi and Claudia Fugazza, suggests that when speaking about language ability in dogs, we should consider two classes of words. The first class contains commands that impel the dog to perform an action, such as "sit" or "fetch." Dogs learn such "action words" with apparent ease and can also learn signals, which we can conceive of as a sort of body language, which instruct them as to which action has been requested. However, learning words that are names of objects seems to be much more difficult and is rarer.

The search for gifted dogs

This group of investigators set up a search for clever dogs, which lasted for two years. They were looking for dogs, of any age, of any breed (or mixed breed), that knew the names of their toys. They searched using media announcements and word of mouth during international seminars, conferences, and lectures given by members of the team.

After all of this effort, they managed to recruit six dogs, all Border Collies, and all living as family pets. Border Collies certainly fit my classification of super dogs since they ranked number one in working and obedience intelligence, according to research I reported in "The Intelligence of Dogs." Before this latest investigation of these clever dogs, each had been shown to know the names of at least 26 objects (toys). They proved this knowledge by successfully retrieving each named toy that the owner requested when the toy was placed in a different room and mixed into a pile of other toys.

Teaching the genius dogs

In a recently published report, a team of scientists headed by Shany Dror from the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University attempted to see just how good the learning ability of what they labeled "Gifted Word Learner Dogs" actually is. However, before describing their results, it is important to note that they are testing a highly select group of very intelligent dogs. In fact, their YouTube recordings of the testing procedures are called the "Genius Dog Challenge."

One of the most interesting aspects of this study is that the researchers did not specify how the dogs were to be taught the names of new objects. The dog owners were allowed to freely interact with their dogs and teach them the names of the new toys as they saw fit. All of them chose to use short sessions in which they were playfully interacting with the dogs, which in many ways mimics how we informally teach our children language.

Specifically for this study, in each play session, the owner selected one of the new toys, presented it to the dog, and while repeating its name, encouraged the dog to bite the toy, tossed it in the air, and asked the dog to fetch it by name, and then put it in a pile of other objects to retrieve. You can see an example of how such training goes here. The amount of time spent training the dog varied among the owners. Four of them reported training their dogs a half hour or less each day, one reported playing the game for one and a half hours, and one for approximately two and a half hours daily.

Intelligence Essential Reads

What Primitive, Ancient Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human

Unveiling the Secrets of Intelligence and Giftedness

Just how smart were these gifted dogs?

This research found that these genius dogs could quickly learn the names of 12 new toys in one week. You can see a demonstration of this here.

To see how well these recently taught elements of language learning were remembered, the owners then put the newly named toys away in storage and retrieved six of them for testing after 30 days and a different six toys for testing after 60 days. Even after as much as a two-month interval in which the dogs did not see the toys or hear their labels, the performance of these dogs was remarkable. Most of the dogs could still recall the names of 5 or 6 toys out of the half-dozen tested, after this time gap.

Can your dog learn language at this level?

Before you go out and start to buy toys to teach your own pet dog new words, consider what is going on here. To start with, we are looking at dogs that are of a breed that has been shown to be extremely intelligent. Furthermore, the dogs that were tested here were only found after an international search for "genius" dogs.

This study thus should be viewed as the equivalent of testing members of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton (which has been home to 35 Nobel Prize winners, including Albert Einstein) to determine their ability at logical reasoning. It really wouldn't be sensible to generalize these results and to assume that average humans would reason just as well as these geniuses. In the same way, it is unlikely that the average pet dog would achieve such spectacular results.

This is an interesting set of studies, but they seem to represent the ceiling, or the highest potential for language learning, that we might expect for dogs. Just remember, if your dog is typical, he can probably learn something like 165 different words or signals representing actions and perhaps a few object names. Even if that performance is below that of what a canine version of Stephen Hawking might achieve, it is still roughly equivalent to the vocabulary of a 2 ½-year-old human child, and that's not bad.

Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission.