These dogs eavesdrop on their owners to learn new words

The entire experiment was then repeated with one key change: this time during the training protocol, instead of addressing the dogs directly while naming new toys, the dogs simply watched their owners talk to another person while naming the toys without ever addressing the dogs directly.

The result: 80 percent of the dogs correctly chose the toys in the direct-handling condition and 100 percent did so in the overhearing condition. Taken together, the results suggest that GWL dogs can learn new object labels simply by overhearing interactions, regardless of whether the dogs are active participants in the interaction or passive listeners—very similar to what has been observed in young children around one and a half years of age.

To examine whether temporal continuity (a nonsocial factor) or lack thereof influences mark learning in GWL dogs, the authors also designed a third experimental design. The owner showed the dog a new toy, put it in a bucket, allowed the dog to remove the toy from the bucket, and then put it back. The owner would then lift the bucket so the dog couldn't see what was inside and repeatedly use the name of the toy in a sentence while looking from the dog to the bucket. Next came the usual testing phase. The authors concluded that dogs do not require temporal continuity to form object-label mappings. And when the same dogs were retested two weeks later, these cards did not deteriorate; the dogs remembered.

But GWL dogs are extremely rare, and the results do not generalize to typical dogs, the team discovered when they conducted both versions of the experiment using 10 non-GWL border collies. There was no evidence of actual learning in these typical dogs; The authors suggest that their behavior reflects a dog's preference for novelty when it comes to choosing toys, rather than an ability to learn object-label comparisons.

“Our results suggest that the social-cognitive processes that enable word learning from overheard speech are not uniquely human,” said co-author Shani Dror universities ELTE and VetMedUni. “Under the right conditions, some dogs behave strikingly similar to the behavior of small children. These dogs provide an exceptional model for studying some of the cognitive abilities that allowed humans to develop language. But we do not assume that all dogs learn this way – far from it.”