We already knew it. And when we say “we,” we mean all aristopeters, all the people who love pets, live with them, and learn from them every day. But sometimes it seems that society needs “confirmation from the scientific community” to accept as valid certain facts observed by ordinary people.
A few weeks ago, television news programs and newspaper front pages around the world reported on the study published by the journal Science, which demonstrated that dogs can distinguish the words we use when addressing them from the intonation we use. The study also revealed that dogs use brain regions similar to those humans use, leading the researchers to conclude that the ability to learn vocabulary is not exclusive to humans. (Something that must surely have left all those dyed-in-the-wool anthropocentrists rather baffled, right? It was about time someone reminded them that we are not the center of the universe…)
To conduct the study, the scientists placed thirteen dogs of different breeds in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine to study their reactions to language. The results revealed that the dogs recognized each word as something distinct, regardless of intonation. What is more, they did so using the left hemisphere of the brain, just as we do.
This study is the first step toward understanding how dogs interpret human speech and may help us understand communication between dogs and humans and make it more efficient. Words are the main element of language and communication. Intonation is another way of conveying information. People understand speech through vocabulary and intonation. The researchers’ goal was to determine whether these two mechanisms also function separately in dogs and how they do so. To this end, the dogs listened to recordings of their trainers’ voices combining different words of praise and neutral words with various types of intonation.
The dogs distinguished both the meaning of the words and the intonation with which they were expressed. They processed intonation separately from vocabulary, just as we do. The conclusion drawn from all this is that dogs not only distinguish what we say and how we say it, but can combine both elements to correctly interpret what those words mean.
To explain dogs’ understanding of speech, the authors point out that canine domestication may have influenced the emergence of a brain structure that enables this ability. However, they add that it is highly unlikely that dogs will develop the necessary abilities related to speech (although many of us know that one of their looks is worth a thousand words…)
We are delighted that science is gradually proving all of us aristopeters right. Because although we are not researchers, we have something not everyone has: day-to-day life with our pets. And our hearts do not lie. That experience allows us to recognize before anyone else what our dogs are like, what they think, and what they feel.