Dogs understand language

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Yoon Kerr Jay Pocius JayPocius Thursday, June 10, 2004 6:23 PMDogs understand languageResearch: Dogs understand languageBy RANDOLPH E. SCHMIDAssociated Press WriterJune 10 2004, 8:06 AM EDThttp://www.ctnow.com/news/custom/newsat3/sns-othernews-0610dogs.storyWASHINGTON -- As many a dog owner will attest, our furry friends are listening. Now, for the doubters,there is scientific proof they understand much of what they hear.German researchers have found a border collie named Rico who understands more than 200 words and can

learn new ones as quickly as many children.Patti Strand, an American Kennel Club board member, called the report "good news for those of us who talk to our dogs.""Like parents of toddlers, we learned long ago theimportance of spelling key words like bath, pill orvet when speaking in front of our dogs," Strand said."Thanks to the researchers who've proven that people who talk to their dogs are cutting-edge communicators, not just a bunch of eccentrics."The researchers found that Rico knows the names ofdozens of play toys and can find the one called for byhis owner. That is a vocabulary size about the same as apes, dolphins and parrots trained to understandwords, the researchers say.Rico can even take the next step, figuring out what anew word means.The researchers put several known toys in a room along with one that Rico had not seen before. From a different room, Rico's owner asked him to fetch a toy, using a name

for the toy the dog had never heard.The border collie, a breed known primarily for itsherding ability, was able to go to the room with thetoys and, seven times out of 10, bring back the one he had not seen before. The dog seemingly understood that because he knew the names of all the other toys, the new one must be the one with the unfamiliar name."Apparently he was able to link the novel word to thenovel item based on exclusion learning, either because he knew that the familiar items already had names or because they were not novel," said the researchers, led by Julia Fischer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.A month later, he still remembered the name of thatnew toy three out of six times, even without havingseen it since that first test. That is a rate thescientists said was equivalent to that of a3-year-old.Rico's learning ability may indicate that some partsof speech comprehension

developed separately from human speech, the scientists said."You don't have to be able to talk to understand alot," Fischer said. The team noted that dogs haveevolved with humans and have been selected for their ability to respond to the communications of people.Katrina Kelner, Science's deputy editor for lifesciences, said "such fast, one-trial learning in dogsis remarkable. This ability suggests that the brainstructures that support this kind of learning are notunique to humans and may have formed the evolutionary basis of some of the advanced language abilities of humans."Perhaps, although Paul Bloom of Yale University urges caution."Children can understand words used in a range ofcontexts. Rico's understanding is manifested in hisfetching behavior," Bloom writes in a commentary, also in Science.Bloom calls for further experiments to answer several questions: Can Rico learn a word for something other than a

small object to be fetched? Can he display knowledge of a word in some way other than fetching? Can he follow an instruction not to fetch something?Fischer and her colleagues are still working with Rico to see if he can understand requests to put toys in boxes or to bring them to certain people. Rico wasborn in December 1994 and lives with his owners. He was tested at home.Funding for this research was provided in part by theGerman Research Foundation.On the Net:Science: http://www.sciencemag.orgGerman Research Foundation:http://www.dfg.de/en/index.htmlMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology:http://www.eva.mpg.de Copyright 2004

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