Think your dog can understand words? This scientist says you might be right(cbc.ca)
cbc.ca
Think your dog can understand words? This scientist says you might be right
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/dogs-understanding-words-new-research-1.7326495
66 comments
So where are all the people who apparently think that pets can't understand basic vocabulary? It's treated like some wild revelation when it comes up in articles like this, but anyone who's ever had a dog or cat knows what the reactions are like when words like "walk" or "bath" or "tuna" get mentioned. For particularly attentive dogs you can even end up with the euphemism treadmill from "walk" to "W-A-L-K" to substituting other phrases to keep them from realizing what you're talking about.
Agreed; this is the default belief of anyone who has interacted with a dog.
If someone were to advance the thesis that dogs were incapable of understanding words I would require some pretty strong evidence before I would believe them.
The soundboard stuff in the article -- not so much. Training a dog to press a button is simple conditioning, but implying any sort of understanding of the language is a bit of a stretch. It sounds like the referenced research (I haven't read the paper) only tests the other way around (that dogs can understand some speech).
If you can show me a dog trained to understand "stand on the yellow bench" and similar commands, but never actually hearing the specific command "sit on the red chair" and being able to execute that, then maybe I'm interested, but otherwise a dog hitting a button that says "I love you" is great for instagram but is indistinguishable from a button that says "look at me and pet me please".
If someone were to advance the thesis that dogs were incapable of understanding words I would require some pretty strong evidence before I would believe them.
The soundboard stuff in the article -- not so much. Training a dog to press a button is simple conditioning, but implying any sort of understanding of the language is a bit of a stretch. It sounds like the referenced research (I haven't read the paper) only tests the other way around (that dogs can understand some speech).
If you can show me a dog trained to understand "stand on the yellow bench" and similar commands, but never actually hearing the specific command "sit on the red chair" and being able to execute that, then maybe I'm interested, but otherwise a dog hitting a button that says "I love you" is great for instagram but is indistinguishable from a button that says "look at me and pet me please".
Look into Bunny the sheepadoodle https://www.instagram.com/whataboutbunny?igsh=cHNtZTk0Y3dsND.... She makes consistent phrases like “look look outside squirrel” or “dad upstairs poop”.
Lots of people think animals are dumb beasts. My neighbor threw a party with a bunch of people in his PhD program. Our dogs hang out and we left the gate open between our properties so the dogs could go back and forth.
One of the PhD students was amazed that if you threw a ball over the fence the dog knew how to go around the fence and through the gate to get the ball.
One of the PhD students was amazed that if you threw a ball over the fence the dog knew how to go around the fence and through the gate to get the ball.
A friend of mine had a dog (Rover) that was half dingo. Dang, was he smart. But if he was on a rope attached to a tree, and wound around the tree, he could not figure out that he needed to run the other direction to unwind the rope.
When he went on vacation, he asked if I could walk Rover once a day, I said sure. Rover reveled in being the top dog in the neighborhood. One of his favorite methods to assert dominance was hilarious. We'd pass one yard that had a fence made from vertical planks butted against each other. The yard contained one of the beta dogs.
Rover found a knothole at just the right height, put his butt against it, and emptied through the hole into the beta dog's territory.
The beta dog went berserk. Rover literally pranced as we continued his walkies.
When he went on vacation, he asked if I could walk Rover once a day, I said sure. Rover reveled in being the top dog in the neighborhood. One of his favorite methods to assert dominance was hilarious. We'd pass one yard that had a fence made from vertical planks butted against each other. The yard contained one of the beta dogs.
Rover found a knothole at just the right height, put his butt against it, and emptied through the hole into the beta dog's territory.
The beta dog went berserk. Rover literally pranced as we continued his walkies.
When our dog’s toy rolled under the couch he went and retrieved a flyswatter we keep in the cleaning closet and brought it to me. He had seen me use this only one other time when his toy rolled under there.
They can certainly learn things like using gates, however they don't seem to have a concept of object permanence. If they go to the other side of the fence and do not find the ball, they will tend to begin a spiraling search for it, rather than concentrate on where the ball logically should be if you tracked the trajectory of it and formed a concept of where it went even after it left your sight.
Dogs obviously have a concept of object permanence, since they know to go around the fence to look for a ball in the first place. They wouldn't look for it once it's left their sight around a fence otherwise. That they're confused if they cannot immediately find the ball only shows that they struggle to calculate arcs, which many humans also do.
And for anyone with a particularly intelligent but ball obsessed breed of dog you can ask them to get the ball so you can play and they’ll go from the front of the house around the back to pick it up off the top shelf in the shed where you placed it (but forgot yourself, but they remembered) and bring it to you.
I absolutely assure you: My border collie knows at all times where the ball is. There’s zero question of object permanance.
I absolutely assure you: My border collie knows at all times where the ball is. There’s zero question of object permanance.
I swear people who talk about object permanence have never tested it.
The Wikipedia article about babies even talks about it not starting until month 8 [1]! At least, under "Contradicting evidence" they talk about other studies that showed as early as 3 months ...
I think people just want to feel special and just can't accept that other animals have the same abilities that we do.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence#Stages
The Wikipedia article about babies even talks about it not starting until month 8 [1]! At least, under "Contradicting evidence" they talk about other studies that showed as early as 3 months ...
I think people just want to feel special and just can't accept that other animals have the same abilities that we do.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence#Stages
Likely because their brain is optimized to find live prey, which tends to move around and take evasive actions. Intuitively understanding parabolic motion physics is probably not that useful in the wild.
This speaks to an interesting question that is extremely difficult to answer:
"Can pets think conceptually?"
A word like "table", to a human, does not represent a concrete. It represents an abstraction, ALL tables, all things that have a flat surface and four legs.
When a dog hears "table", or "walk", do they understand the abstract concept of walking, or tables in general? Or do they interpret it as a very specific, concrete verb or noun?
That is the 6 million dollar question when it comes to an animal's ability to truly, genuinely understand spoken language. This is also why some philosophers conclude that animals cannot reason (it's a hypothesis, though, we don't know). Reason requires abstract thought and being able to prove that an animal is capable of abstract thinking is incredibly difficult.
"Can pets think conceptually?"
A word like "table", to a human, does not represent a concrete. It represents an abstraction, ALL tables, all things that have a flat surface and four legs.
When a dog hears "table", or "walk", do they understand the abstract concept of walking, or tables in general? Or do they interpret it as a very specific, concrete verb or noun?
That is the 6 million dollar question when it comes to an animal's ability to truly, genuinely understand spoken language. This is also why some philosophers conclude that animals cannot reason (it's a hypothesis, though, we don't know). Reason requires abstract thought and being able to prove that an animal is capable of abstract thinking is incredibly difficult.
Here's a case in which a dog, already knowing the name of more than a hundred objects, associated a previously unknown name with a previously unknown object. I don't know if there are any controlled, replicated studies demonstrating this.
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/world-smartest-dog-nova-sp...
This would not imply a facility for language understanding and resoning to anything like the extent we have, but it is the sort of preliminary step that might have opened the door for language to evolve in our ancestors.
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/world-smartest-dog-nova-sp...
This would not imply a facility for language understanding and resoning to anything like the extent we have, but it is the sort of preliminary step that might have opened the door for language to evolve in our ancestors.
What would it even mean in practice for them to think about concrete "walking" instead of the abstract concept? Verbs are inherently abstract.
When I was with my dog in my parents' house and said "spacer" (walk in Polish) - he was happy and jumped around in anticipation, bringing the leash. He did the same in my grandparents house even though we weren't going to the same place - he just wanted to go on a walk doesn't matter the area. What's your explanation that does not involve abstracting the action from the concrete area and time?
Another example - my sister trained our other dog to bring her plush toys on command. She hidden them in house and said "szukaj" (search) and then rewarded the dog with a clicker and/or a treat when the dog brought her the toy. It takes several steps (first you hide the toy very close and then you hide it outside of view). Also you reward the dog with the clicker on intermediate successes like getting the toy without bringing it to the owner.
Anyway - one time my sister lost one glove when we were on a walk with that dog. She noticed only when we were returning from the fields. She gave the dog the other glove to sniff and said "szukaj". Ciri (our dog) went back a few hundred meters searching for the glove and found it and brought it back.
There are smarter and dumber dogs (Ciri was probably the smartest dogs we ever had) - but the ability to generalize and reason is obviously there. Like - I can't imagine an unbiased scientist having a dog for extended period of time and not seeing it.
Dogs also have theory of mind (I've seen Ciri bury a bone in one place, wait for our other dog - Jaskier - to go home, and rebury it elsewhere).
Dogs also know which things are forbidden, and know that the things that are forbidden - aren't forbidden when nobody's there to see them do it :)
We also had a pretty aggressive dog before that - Kuba - which used to pursue neighbors cat when it came to our backyard. The backyard was fenced, and when the cat could see our dog - he wouldn't come. So our dog pretended to be asleep or hidden and waited for the cat to come, then he pursued it up a tree and waited under the tree till we came to free the cat.
This requires reasoning. It shouldn't be surprising - these are social animals that hunt in packs, cooperate, play pack politics, and need to reason about others in their pack and about the prey. How would they survive as a species if they had to invent pack tactics from scratch every time they hunted? Obviously they can generalize.
I find most of these arguments against animals thinking either incredibly naive or biased. Like some people actually argue dogs are "meat automatons" with no capacity to think whatsoever. It's like fishers saying fish can't feel pain :/
When I was with my dog in my parents' house and said "spacer" (walk in Polish) - he was happy and jumped around in anticipation, bringing the leash. He did the same in my grandparents house even though we weren't going to the same place - he just wanted to go on a walk doesn't matter the area. What's your explanation that does not involve abstracting the action from the concrete area and time?
Another example - my sister trained our other dog to bring her plush toys on command. She hidden them in house and said "szukaj" (search) and then rewarded the dog with a clicker and/or a treat when the dog brought her the toy. It takes several steps (first you hide the toy very close and then you hide it outside of view). Also you reward the dog with the clicker on intermediate successes like getting the toy without bringing it to the owner.
Anyway - one time my sister lost one glove when we were on a walk with that dog. She noticed only when we were returning from the fields. She gave the dog the other glove to sniff and said "szukaj". Ciri (our dog) went back a few hundred meters searching for the glove and found it and brought it back.
There are smarter and dumber dogs (Ciri was probably the smartest dogs we ever had) - but the ability to generalize and reason is obviously there. Like - I can't imagine an unbiased scientist having a dog for extended period of time and not seeing it.
Dogs also have theory of mind (I've seen Ciri bury a bone in one place, wait for our other dog - Jaskier - to go home, and rebury it elsewhere).
Dogs also know which things are forbidden, and know that the things that are forbidden - aren't forbidden when nobody's there to see them do it :)
We also had a pretty aggressive dog before that - Kuba - which used to pursue neighbors cat when it came to our backyard. The backyard was fenced, and when the cat could see our dog - he wouldn't come. So our dog pretended to be asleep or hidden and waited for the cat to come, then he pursued it up a tree and waited under the tree till we came to free the cat.
This requires reasoning. It shouldn't be surprising - these are social animals that hunt in packs, cooperate, play pack politics, and need to reason about others in their pack and about the prey. How would they survive as a species if they had to invent pack tactics from scratch every time they hunted? Obviously they can generalize.
I find most of these arguments against animals thinking either incredibly naive or biased. Like some people actually argue dogs are "meat automatons" with no capacity to think whatsoever. It's like fishers saying fish can't feel pain :/
> What would it even mean in practice for them to think about concrete "walking" instead of the abstract concept? Verbs are inherently abstract.
Your example of the leash and the concept of "walking" is an excellent point.
To answer your question, all proper nouns are not abstract by definition. Your name refers to you, specifically and concretely, it does not refer to the concept of "person" or "people."
But to take this further, imagine the following thought experiment:
You have a newborn infant, and you isolate them from the rest of the world (remember this is a thought experiment, so we are not bound by ethical considerations for this purpose). You show them 3 identical staplers. You call the first one "Foo", the second one "Bar" and the 3rd one "Baz."
An infant might, on their own as they grow and mature, start to abstract and conceptualize a concept of a logical grouping here. They might observe that Foo, Bar and Baz have similarities and, being humans, they might even come up with some kind of verbal or non-verbal cue to reference this abstract concept.
But for a while at least, these are individual concretes. If all they ever see is one single concrete "stapler", they may learn to associate the word with the concrete and never even think about abstracting it. But if they do start to abstract it upon observation of similar "things" ... to what degree are non-humans capable of doing that?
You provide a lot of good evidence that dogs can to some degree. But to what extent? What are the limitations?
These are unanswered questions in both science and philosophy.
I hope I answered your question, as it was a valid one. I'm not giving answers to these hypotheses and philosophical conjectures. I'm saying that this is something that is still not quite figured out yet.
Your example of the leash and the concept of "walking" is an excellent point.
To answer your question, all proper nouns are not abstract by definition. Your name refers to you, specifically and concretely, it does not refer to the concept of "person" or "people."
But to take this further, imagine the following thought experiment:
You have a newborn infant, and you isolate them from the rest of the world (remember this is a thought experiment, so we are not bound by ethical considerations for this purpose). You show them 3 identical staplers. You call the first one "Foo", the second one "Bar" and the 3rd one "Baz."
An infant might, on their own as they grow and mature, start to abstract and conceptualize a concept of a logical grouping here. They might observe that Foo, Bar and Baz have similarities and, being humans, they might even come up with some kind of verbal or non-verbal cue to reference this abstract concept.
But for a while at least, these are individual concretes. If all they ever see is one single concrete "stapler", they may learn to associate the word with the concrete and never even think about abstracting it. But if they do start to abstract it upon observation of similar "things" ... to what degree are non-humans capable of doing that?
You provide a lot of good evidence that dogs can to some degree. But to what extent? What are the limitations?
These are unanswered questions in both science and philosophy.
I hope I answered your question, as it was a valid one. I'm not giving answers to these hypotheses and philosophical conjectures. I'm saying that this is something that is still not quite figured out yet.
> I hope I answered your question
It was mostly rethorical, but thanks :)
BTW I think the concrete proper nouns we use (like "Eve") are actually abstractions too and prove some reasoning capability.
At first infants don't realize objects exist. They just see shapes and react to them. When something disappears from their view - it's the same as if it stopped existing. That's why you can play peekaboo with them and not bore them.
To abstract from "a shape that sometimes appears, moves and disappears" to "an object that exists over time even when it's not visible" is a pretty impressive generalization. If AI was able to do it on its own I would be impressed at least. I'd even say it's more impressive than the next step (generalizing from "mom' and "papa" to "person").
Of course we have hardware in our brains dedicated for this stuff and it's probably not conscious reasoning that gets us the object permanence. And we don't remember it in any case. So we take it for granted.
But when you think about it the generalization from "sensations in my eyes" to "objects in the world" is a pretty big one.
It was mostly rethorical, but thanks :)
BTW I think the concrete proper nouns we use (like "Eve") are actually abstractions too and prove some reasoning capability.
At first infants don't realize objects exist. They just see shapes and react to them. When something disappears from their view - it's the same as if it stopped existing. That's why you can play peekaboo with them and not bore them.
To abstract from "a shape that sometimes appears, moves and disappears" to "an object that exists over time even when it's not visible" is a pretty impressive generalization. If AI was able to do it on its own I would be impressed at least. I'd even say it's more impressive than the next step (generalizing from "mom' and "papa" to "person").
Of course we have hardware in our brains dedicated for this stuff and it's probably not conscious reasoning that gets us the object permanence. And we don't remember it in any case. So we take it for granted.
But when you think about it the generalization from "sensations in my eyes" to "objects in the world" is a pretty big one.
It gets even wilder than that.
There is a psychological concept called "anchoring" which associates two different things perceptually. For example, it's what happens when you listen to a song during a particular time in your life, and then many years later you hear the song and feel all the things you felt in that moment with all of the memories triggered etc.
You make a good point about language itself being some form of abstraction in reference to the objective world. But this conversation reminds me of a famous artwork called "The Treachery of Images." It is a painting of a tobacco pipe with the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe" in English).
Through the painting, we can appreciate that a picture of a pipe is an abstraction that represents a pipe, and is not the same thing as a pipe itself. It is a painting that appeals directly to reason.
The philosophical and scientific question is: when a dog hears the word "walk", or sees a leash, is it conceptual abstraction at play; the understanding of a logical category... or is it emotional anchoring that came about through Pavlovian conditioning and having that word associated with a memory of a concrete?
There is a psychological concept called "anchoring" which associates two different things perceptually. For example, it's what happens when you listen to a song during a particular time in your life, and then many years later you hear the song and feel all the things you felt in that moment with all of the memories triggered etc.
You make a good point about language itself being some form of abstraction in reference to the objective world. But this conversation reminds me of a famous artwork called "The Treachery of Images." It is a painting of a tobacco pipe with the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe" in English).
Through the painting, we can appreciate that a picture of a pipe is an abstraction that represents a pipe, and is not the same thing as a pipe itself. It is a painting that appeals directly to reason.
The philosophical and scientific question is: when a dog hears the word "walk", or sees a leash, is it conceptual abstraction at play; the understanding of a logical category... or is it emotional anchoring that came about through Pavlovian conditioning and having that word associated with a memory of a concrete?
The article talks about having dogs talk back by pressing buttons for various words.
Maybe buttons are necessary when humans don't understand dog words?
Or to put it another way, buttons demonstrate dogs being multilingual across species...
Or to put it another way, buttons demonstrate dogs being multilingual across species...
My dog used to get really worked up and bite me when she wanted something, so I started teaching to answer my questions. So, when she wants something, she sits in front of me and I start asking: What do you want? Food? <pause> Water? <pause> Poop? When I reach the word, she bumps on me with the front paws.
I guess this is the equivalent of the soundboard.
I guess this is the equivalent of the soundboard.
Words are a human construct - language. Dogs don't naturally have words or language - there's no bark that conveys a static meaning. They do correlate noises, like whines, barks, growls, with things they have experience with, and are clever enough to string complex and abstract concepts together. That level of reasoning and communication is not language, however.
What the buttons demonstrate is that dogs are capable of learning and using language. Complex concepts, like fire being hot and dangerous, yet needed to keep the house warm, so start the fire before the walk (a recent Bunny episode.)
This goes beyond Cesar Milan being the dog whisperer and into something novel. For the first time, we have dogs and other animals demonstrating that they can learn words and rules of grammar, connecting sequences of words together to form a specific meaning. That means a dog can say "go walk later" "ouch paw" and so forth, and bring about some sort of reaction from their human that would have been impossible without buttons. In the study they've been doing, dogs have demonstrated the capacity for humor, combining the semantics of different words to create new words, assigning nicknames, and stringing together upwards of 5 words to express a coherent idea.
This should cause us all to stop and question whether our perception of animals needs changing. To all appearances, any mammal, or animal with functionality comparable to a neocortex, is capable of using language. Cows, pigs, horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, and all sorts of other animals have learned to use these button systems. Birds and primates have long been known to use sign language, able to understand spoken words and respond with fairly intelligent and complex language of their own. Bears, lions, dolphins, orcas, and whales are likely to be among the most intelligent and linguistically facile creatures aside from humans.
Perhaps the neural structure imposed by learning language results in a significant shift in capacity. When you consider feral humans, and the extreme difficulties they have with language acquisition, and then think on Helen Keller's description of language and communication resulting in her becoming conscious and aware, maybe teaching language to these animals is inducing a real change in consciousness, providing them the foundations of a life and experience with which we can directly empathize.
Courts recently ruled against elephants being people - well, we should take a hard look at what "people" really means. Mysticism and religious traditions aren't sufficient in a world inhabited by science. Humans aren't people "because God said so" or "the holy book says all other animals are lesser."
We are where we are because our brains, mouths, hands, and eyes give us an advantage in controlling our environments. Left feral, we're often no more capable or extraordinary than other primates. Given culture, education, and language, and humanity becomes some significantly more powerful and impactful in the world. Giving dogs language probably isn't going to result in dogs writing blogs, or horses filing legal briefs, but humans could establish a culture that lifts them up, empowers them, and provides a set of tools by which dogs (and other animals) are able to express more agency and have a much more potent impact on the world.
For example, imagine a standardized education for dogs, in which a set of 100 words are taught to them as puppies, consistently modeled. This would mean that almost any dog you encounter would have a shared means of communication - for dogcatchers, that'd be a pretty good deal. It'd also mean "yes, good friend. come treat." or similar phrases might be used to put a dog at ease. Most dog attacks happen because you have a terrified animal in an unpredictable situation, and all the dog knows is how to react with fear and aggression. Layering communication into that definitely wouldn't solve everything, but hey, it'd be a lot better than nothing.
I can't wait for Cesar or a comparably talented trainer to grab on to the dog button trend; there's a subtle but deep difference between being greeted by a flurry of wiggles and joyful bouncing, and all the wiggles and bouncing with "Dad hi love you play" or "Mom friend human".
What the buttons demonstrate is that dogs are capable of learning and using language. Complex concepts, like fire being hot and dangerous, yet needed to keep the house warm, so start the fire before the walk (a recent Bunny episode.)
This goes beyond Cesar Milan being the dog whisperer and into something novel. For the first time, we have dogs and other animals demonstrating that they can learn words and rules of grammar, connecting sequences of words together to form a specific meaning. That means a dog can say "go walk later" "ouch paw" and so forth, and bring about some sort of reaction from their human that would have been impossible without buttons. In the study they've been doing, dogs have demonstrated the capacity for humor, combining the semantics of different words to create new words, assigning nicknames, and stringing together upwards of 5 words to express a coherent idea.
This should cause us all to stop and question whether our perception of animals needs changing. To all appearances, any mammal, or animal with functionality comparable to a neocortex, is capable of using language. Cows, pigs, horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, and all sorts of other animals have learned to use these button systems. Birds and primates have long been known to use sign language, able to understand spoken words and respond with fairly intelligent and complex language of their own. Bears, lions, dolphins, orcas, and whales are likely to be among the most intelligent and linguistically facile creatures aside from humans.
Perhaps the neural structure imposed by learning language results in a significant shift in capacity. When you consider feral humans, and the extreme difficulties they have with language acquisition, and then think on Helen Keller's description of language and communication resulting in her becoming conscious and aware, maybe teaching language to these animals is inducing a real change in consciousness, providing them the foundations of a life and experience with which we can directly empathize.
Courts recently ruled against elephants being people - well, we should take a hard look at what "people" really means. Mysticism and religious traditions aren't sufficient in a world inhabited by science. Humans aren't people "because God said so" or "the holy book says all other animals are lesser."
We are where we are because our brains, mouths, hands, and eyes give us an advantage in controlling our environments. Left feral, we're often no more capable or extraordinary than other primates. Given culture, education, and language, and humanity becomes some significantly more powerful and impactful in the world. Giving dogs language probably isn't going to result in dogs writing blogs, or horses filing legal briefs, but humans could establish a culture that lifts them up, empowers them, and provides a set of tools by which dogs (and other animals) are able to express more agency and have a much more potent impact on the world.
For example, imagine a standardized education for dogs, in which a set of 100 words are taught to them as puppies, consistently modeled. This would mean that almost any dog you encounter would have a shared means of communication - for dogcatchers, that'd be a pretty good deal. It'd also mean "yes, good friend. come treat." or similar phrases might be used to put a dog at ease. Most dog attacks happen because you have a terrified animal in an unpredictable situation, and all the dog knows is how to react with fear and aggression. Layering communication into that definitely wouldn't solve everything, but hey, it'd be a lot better than nothing.
I can't wait for Cesar or a comparably talented trainer to grab on to the dog button trend; there's a subtle but deep difference between being greeted by a flurry of wiggles and joyful bouncing, and all the wiggles and bouncing with "Dad hi love you play" or "Mom friend human".
What blew my mind was when one of the first dogs to use buttons was confronted with her "beach" button being broken. She started using the phrase "outside-water" to compensate for being unable to say "beach".
This is like when Alex the parrot was confronted with an apple for the first time and called it a "banerry", using the names of fruits he knew (banana and cherry). The ability not just to use words, but form original linguistic constructs in response to novel situations, is something we humans long thought was our domain alone, but it turns out we share it with far more birds and beasts than we realize even today.
This is like when Alex the parrot was confronted with an apple for the first time and called it a "banerry", using the names of fruits he knew (banana and cherry). The ability not just to use words, but form original linguistic constructs in response to novel situations, is something we humans long thought was our domain alone, but it turns out we share it with far more birds and beasts than we realize even today.
"What blew my mind was when one of the first dogs to use buttons was confronted with her "beach" button being broken. She started using the phrase "outside-water" to compensate for being unable to say "beach"."
This is actually something that the skeptics should address when they claim that all that button pushing is just simple conditioning.
Spontaneously creating a logically sound approximation for a broken button doesn't sound like conditioning at all.
This is actually something that the skeptics should address when they claim that all that button pushing is just simple conditioning.
Spontaneously creating a logically sound approximation for a broken button doesn't sound like conditioning at all.
I think it is rather up to those making the claims to show that these stories are more than just selection bias.
How should such a study even look like?
I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs.
I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs.
I don't think I would want to design such a study, but at a minimum arguments would have to be made ahead of time for meaningful pairings "outside-water" == "beach", all button presses would have to be recorded, and then a statistical conclusion could be reached.
> I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs.
Indeed. So whatever such a study concludes is unlikely to change people's ideas about dogs much.
> I mean, some people are perfectly fine with labeling other people NPCs.
Indeed. So whatever such a study concludes is unlikely to change people's ideas about dogs much.
This is actually a study being run - https://www.theycantalk.org/research
They are recording button presses and sequences in both controlled and open situations, and have already observed a consistent capacity to chain multiple buttons together in naming a thing, and have found patterns in the names dogs come up with (I think they're also doing cat studies.)
My own dog has used "outside water good before" to tell me about going potty outside, but over time, outside water has come to mean rain.
There needs to be an acknowledgement that conditioning does happen, and that animals who don't learn language can still recognize words as signals without having any deeper understanding. With buttons, animals are brought to understand the words through contextual use and modeling of the word - emotions and time and abstractions are taught that take the word beyond mere signaling and conditioning.
If you go back and review reports about Clever Hans, what you find is an overwhelming bias and a perverse incentive to deny any and all "cleverness" the horse may have had in favor of maintaining humanity's sole domain of complex and abstract thought. Clever Hans could likely accomplish simple arithmetic. Nearly everyone who "debunked" the claims at the time was hopelessly biased and tangled up with their own worldviews. Horses are brilliant. I've met horses that are smarter than many people I know. (I've also met horses that were sociopathic asshats without any redeeming personality traits, but that's a story for a different thread.) If dogs can learn complex, abstract language and simple counting with a brain the size of a ping pong ball or a peach, a horse brain 4-8 times larger is going to be much more capable and facile.
I think this type of research that takes an unbiased and rational approach to animal cognition will lead to better outcomes for everyone. There's a lot that veterinarians and biologists are taught with roots deep in religious myths and cultural tropes, so it's left a large and mostly untapped field of discovery available for a new generation.
There needs to be an acknowledgement that conditioning does happen, and that animals who don't learn language can still recognize words as signals without having any deeper understanding. With buttons, animals are brought to understand the words through contextual use and modeling of the word - emotions and time and abstractions are taught that take the word beyond mere signaling and conditioning.
If you go back and review reports about Clever Hans, what you find is an overwhelming bias and a perverse incentive to deny any and all "cleverness" the horse may have had in favor of maintaining humanity's sole domain of complex and abstract thought. Clever Hans could likely accomplish simple arithmetic. Nearly everyone who "debunked" the claims at the time was hopelessly biased and tangled up with their own worldviews. Horses are brilliant. I've met horses that are smarter than many people I know. (I've also met horses that were sociopathic asshats without any redeeming personality traits, but that's a story for a different thread.) If dogs can learn complex, abstract language and simple counting with a brain the size of a ping pong ball or a peach, a horse brain 4-8 times larger is going to be much more capable and facile.
I think this type of research that takes an unbiased and rational approach to animal cognition will lead to better outcomes for everyone. There's a lot that veterinarians and biologists are taught with roots deep in religious myths and cultural tropes, so it's left a large and mostly untapped field of discovery available for a new generation.
Horses are brilliant, and it’s good to hear someone say so. A friend says it would take at most 8 vampire horses to wipe out all of humanity.
Dogs don't naturally have words or language
How do you know that?
How do you know that?
You'd need differentiation between coherently patterned noises and a mechanism to pass them between generations. We've been watching dogs for more than 50,000 years, and nobody has ever been able to identify words, or even word-like meanings in the noises dogs make. Dogs don't have language - coherent patterned noises - or culture, outside of what humans carry forward through generations on dogs' behalf.
This isn't to say their vocalizations and body language don't have meaning - they have rich and varied meanings, and that's how experienced trainers and dog owners can observe and interpret dog behavior at a high level of competence. They're just not using language - meaningfully coherent words and grammars.
That's the whole point of the buttons - you can teach them to use words and simple rules of grammar, and get amazing interactions like Bunny talking about "night talk" dreams, or laughing at "play poop" fart situations, dogs planning their eat, walk, settle schedules, and so on. Buttons elevate the level of communication and relationship with the animal, and grants them agency that they otherwise wouldn't have.
As far as non-human language goes, there may be languages developed and learned by pods of whales, orcas, and dolphins. There could even be really old languages, passed down through oral traditions, and scientists are currently researching with AI to see if we can crack cetacean or delphinidae communication. It could also be they have sophisticated "vibes" based communication without highly specific assigned meanings to every vocalization like humans, or some mysterious mixture of unexpected features that's a little alien to the way we think. We know they have culture, and appear to have discrete words and grammar, so this research is really exciting.
This isn't to say their vocalizations and body language don't have meaning - they have rich and varied meanings, and that's how experienced trainers and dog owners can observe and interpret dog behavior at a high level of competence. They're just not using language - meaningfully coherent words and grammars.
That's the whole point of the buttons - you can teach them to use words and simple rules of grammar, and get amazing interactions like Bunny talking about "night talk" dreams, or laughing at "play poop" fart situations, dogs planning their eat, walk, settle schedules, and so on. Buttons elevate the level of communication and relationship with the animal, and grants them agency that they otherwise wouldn't have.
As far as non-human language goes, there may be languages developed and learned by pods of whales, orcas, and dolphins. There could even be really old languages, passed down through oral traditions, and scientists are currently researching with AI to see if we can crack cetacean or delphinidae communication. It could also be they have sophisticated "vibes" based communication without highly specific assigned meanings to every vocalization like humans, or some mysterious mixture of unexpected features that's a little alien to the way we think. We know they have culture, and appear to have discrete words and grammar, so this research is really exciting.
nobody has ever been able to identify words
That is a statement about humans.
Not dogs.
That is a statement about humans.
Not dogs.
It's easy to see button board claims that are questionable, when it gets into complex phrases or things that need grammatical rules to make sense.
But I wouldn't expect basic button use to be controversial.
But I wouldn't expect basic button use to be controversial.
I can believe it with dogs, but my cat of almost 20 years has never indicated any understanding of or interest in human speech. She sometimes reacts to tone of voice, sometimes to specific noises (like treat baggie crumbling when opened), but not any particular words. Half the time she could care less about the tone or noises as well. That seems pretty in line with my general understanding of cat "psychology".
Gary Larson expressed this best:
https://www.marketingfirst.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/...
https://www.marketingfirst.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/...
Anecdotal but I have trained a cat to understand certain words. I doubt she ever was able to contextualize the language, but she would react to specific words related to treats. In addition to that she would react to her name. Not in the same way a dog would but she would look at you when you said her name.
I think with dogs it definitely comes more easily. Training a cat takes a lot more persistence since they do not have the same social tools as dogs.
I think with dogs it definitely comes more easily. Training a cat takes a lot more persistence since they do not have the same social tools as dogs.
My dog growing up learned "W-A-L-K" after a while, and we switched to Pig Latin.
Possibly by the time he could have learned it, he was pretty old.
My current dog knows the basic ones like, "walk", "outside", "lunch", etc.
Possibly by the time he could have learned it, he was pretty old.
My current dog knows the basic ones like, "walk", "outside", "lunch", etc.
A relative had a dog who understood "b-i-r-d" spelled out....
Reminds me of when I was in 3rd grade, I told my teacher that some birds (parrots) can really understand words.
He flat out laughed at me in front of the whole class, and said No Way. I quietly disagreed with him.
When I got home, I told the story to my bird :)
He flat out laughed at me in front of the whole class, and said No Way. I quietly disagreed with him.
When I got home, I told the story to my bird :)
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On the one hand, people put a lot of meaning behind things that may not have it.
On the other hand, I can tell one of my dogs which room my wife is in and he'll go directly to that room to get her. My house isn't small, either. I didn't specifically train him to do that, and it doesn't even come up that often, so I don't actually know why it works.
On the other hand, I can tell one of my dogs which room my wife is in and he'll go directly to that room to get her. My house isn't small, either. I didn't specifically train him to do that, and it doesn't even come up that often, so I don't actually know why it works.
Yeah. Dogs. It’s incredible how they can be both incredibly stupid and incredibly smart altogether.
Hmm, I'm not that sure.
I did a month of quiet Yoga (no talking whatsoever) and brought my dog with me for the ride. I came to realize that the words are mostly there to help me, she doesn't care. If I switch the word and say it with the same energy/body language, the result is the same.
I don't even need words anymore, body language is more effective with my dog.
I did a month of quiet Yoga (no talking whatsoever) and brought my dog with me for the ride. I came to realize that the words are mostly there to help me, she doesn't care. If I switch the word and say it with the same energy/body language, the result is the same.
I don't even need words anymore, body language is more effective with my dog.
The researchers aimed to rule out variables such as a dog responding to their owner's cues — like, the owner putting on shoes to go outside — the identity of the human saying the word, or memorizing the location of buttons on the board.John W. Pilley conducted investigations involving his border collie named Chaser. Chaser had ~200 or so toys, each with a unique name; if Pilley asked her to fetch a toy by name, she would reliably find the corresponding toy out of a pile of all of them and bring it back. Pilley found that when Chaser was asked to fetch a toy whose name Chaser hadn't heard, Chaser would find the new toy she hadn't seen before in the pile and bring it back. He controlled for cues like face and body language by sitting still with his back to Chaser while giving the commands, so that he could neither see the toy being fetched nor unconsciously signal to Chaser.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_(dog)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_(dog)
Dogs can absolutely learn sign language for basic commands. There are books about it. We had some success with ours. The main difficulty is you do have to use some kind of sound to get their attention if they're not looking at you. (Perhaps a clap would do.)
I started snapping my fingers to get her attention.
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Perhaps off-topic, but we had a dog that knew swearing when she heard it.
Most dogs are well-attuned to both positive and negative emotions. In particular, when a human starts yelling and throwing things, they get the hell out of dodge. So it's obviously not a surprise that a dog would beat a hasty exit when their human emits a flurry of exasperated expletives.
However, our dog took it a bit further. Before kids, my wife and I had a habit of swearing in our normal, neutral conversations. It took a while before I noticed the pattern but eventually I found that even a light and airy "well, fuck" essentially inaudibly under my breath would quite reliably cause our dog to sigh heavily, get up, and saunter out of the room with considerably more than a whiff of indignation.
Most dogs are well-attuned to both positive and negative emotions. In particular, when a human starts yelling and throwing things, they get the hell out of dodge. So it's obviously not a surprise that a dog would beat a hasty exit when their human emits a flurry of exasperated expletives.
However, our dog took it a bit further. Before kids, my wife and I had a habit of swearing in our normal, neutral conversations. It took a while before I noticed the pattern but eventually I found that even a light and airy "well, fuck" essentially inaudibly under my breath would quite reliably cause our dog to sigh heavily, get up, and saunter out of the room with considerably more than a whiff of indignation.
Do we have blind confirmation? As in, do the dogs carry out volleys with people that don't know them? Dogs could be picking up body language, pheromones, and other signals rather than comprehending; without, this could be the old vaudeville act of the counting horse that stops tapping when the owner reacts.
I knew a dog that had a decent vocabulary. He would visibly react to words like CAR, WALK, or PARK. He also understood PARTY and MEAT and would wag his tail for PART and lick his chops to MEAT. One time we were going to a BBQ so I explained to him we were taking the CAR to a MEAT PARTY and he got super excites, wagging his tail and going to the door all while frothing at the mouth. Anecdotal but it certainly looked like he could synthesize concepts and imagine what was going to happen in the near future.
I've done a few other experiments with my foreign speaking friends and it appeared to me that dogs understand the language their owners speak primarily.
I've done a few other experiments with my foreign speaking friends and it appeared to me that dogs understand the language their owners speak primarily.
The author Mary Robinette Kowal has a cat, Elsie, who uses a button board. I’m reluctant to call it language exactly, but it is definitely a kind of communication.
An example is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C48uKZ8veql/
It’s interesting how words shift in meaning with the cat, so litterbox, for example, has come to be a word for anything unpleasant. Elsie also will come up with nicknames for people she encounters relatively frequently, not always complimentary.
An example is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C48uKZ8veql/
It’s interesting how words shift in meaning with the cat, so litterbox, for example, has come to be a word for anything unpleasant. Elsie also will come up with nicknames for people she encounters relatively frequently, not always complimentary.
> so litterbox, for example, has come to be a word for anything unpleasant.
That's rich. It exactly mirrors how we have come to use gastronomical words such as "disgusting" for moral opprobrium. The same parts of the limbic system are used to process both concepts.
Anything that's bad could be described as 'shitty' which is about as close as we can get to the same usage.
That's rich. It exactly mirrors how we have come to use gastronomical words such as "disgusting" for moral opprobrium. The same parts of the limbic system are used to process both concepts.
Anything that's bad could be described as 'shitty' which is about as close as we can get to the same usage.
Raises the age-old and now-new-again-thanks-to-LLMs of the nature of the difference between recognizing sounds and understanding words.
I have zero doubt that our dog can do the former. Not sure about the latter.
I have zero doubt that our dog can do the former. Not sure about the latter.
Echoing others, everyone knew this but we do need to actually test and prove it.
My cat knows speak, sit, 360, shake, nose kiss, and up as far as tricks go. Originally, we paired both a hand motion and the word. Now, either works. I can make the sit gesture, she’ll sit. Or just saying sit works too. She’s observed how we open our doors and now is capable of leaping up and pulling the handle herself, including a little wiggle to pull the door open enough to wedge her face through for final entry.
Cats seem to use tone in their meows to tell you a lot, and while I can’t say I understand really, it’s clear when there’s a hello chirp or an upset, lower tone yowl.
My cat knows speak, sit, 360, shake, nose kiss, and up as far as tricks go. Originally, we paired both a hand motion and the word. Now, either works. I can make the sit gesture, she’ll sit. Or just saying sit works too. She’s observed how we open our doors and now is capable of leaping up and pulling the handle herself, including a little wiggle to pull the door open enough to wedge her face through for final entry.
Cats seem to use tone in their meows to tell you a lot, and while I can’t say I understand really, it’s clear when there’s a hello chirp or an upset, lower tone yowl.
There really are all the ingredients out there for the creation of an animal-human communication model. Except maybe money and will.
People spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on their pets. I'm sure a company will come along to try and make one because holy shit you'd make a lot of money selling the app that lets your pet talk to you.
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See also the Canadian satirical news show that claimed that dogs in Montreal would have to be bilingual. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/no-dogs-don-t-have-t...
Can dog understand numbers like 1237124? Or email like [email protected]?
throw745859(1)
It's just an LLM. My cat can understand a few words.
The article is clearly a stark example of selection bias, ignoring all the times where the dog didn't press relevant buttons and highlighting random successes.
There are countless proofs that dogs don't understand words, and it's extremely easy to demonstrate: https://youtube.com/shorts/CIDZG7bdP7k
There are countless proofs that dogs don't understand words, and it's extremely easy to demonstrate: https://youtube.com/shorts/CIDZG7bdP7k