Budapest ELTE makes breakthrough discovery about how clever dogs are and how they extend vocabulary

A new study publishing in Current Biology on 18 September reveals that dogs with a vocabulary of toy names—known as Gifted Word Learners—can extend learned labels to entirely new objects, not because the objects look similar, but because they are used in the same way.

Gifted Word Learner dogs

In humans, “label extension” is a cornerstone of early language development. In non-humans, until now, it had only been documented in few so-called language-trained individual animals, after years of intensive training in captivity.

But learning to extend labels to objects that share the same function, rather than visual similarities, is considered an even more complex skill. A toddler learns that the word “cup” can apply to mugs, tumblers, and sippy cups, or that both a spoon and a ladle are “for scooping.” While individuals of many animal species can group items by appearance, extending a learned label to a functionally similar but visually different object has long been considered an advanced skill.

The time and efforts needed to train animals in captivity to learn verbal labels, as well as the very limited number of subjects that successfully acquired such vocabulary, have until now limited the feasibility of this type of research.

But here comes the twist! “Gifted Word Learner dogs offer a unique possibility to study this phenomenon because they rapidly learn verbal labels – the names of toys – during natural interactions in their human families” said Dr. Claudia Fugazza, lead author of the study.

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“Our results show that these dogs do not just memorize object names,” continues Dr. Fugazza. “They understand the meaning behind those labels well enough to apply them to new, very different-looking toys— by recognizing what the toys were for.”

A play-based experiment

Researchers of the Department of Ethology, at Eötvös Lorand University tested 7 Gifted Word Learner dogs—(six Border collies and a Blue heeler)—known for their unusual ability to learn the names of dozens of toys naturally, through everyday play.

The experiment had four stages, all of them conducted in a natural setup, at the house of each dog owner, during playful interactions: