Of course dogs respond to human cues - visual, physical, and vocal. They have been domesticated to coexist with this species. They are for all intents and purposes genetically engineered products for our benefit and enjoyment, and we work pretty well together. In general, the animals respond to each other in mutually agreeable ways. In particular, specific individuals respond to each other in idiosyncratic ways that mirror those patterns. Spot, or Steve, or whatever his name is (the remarkable sheepdog) seems to have approached genius level - for a dog. I’ve had dogs that approached the other end of the spectrum. Most of them seem to be pretty well attuned to us in some general ways, and they all seem to like to please. They will all pretty much do what we say, too, since they want to…please us. They respond to praise much as a young child does. Young children want to please us. When people get older, they lose that impulse and become more independent. Dogs don’t develop to that level “psychologically.” Despite many anecdotes, dogs can’t read the paper they were trained on, don’t know September from October, don’t know yesterday from the day before, and can’t tell the difference between an Mac and a PC. But we loves our dorgs, and that’s pretty much all that counts, really. (Nice to see you back, Lissa.)
Show me a distinction between how a dog understands language and how a 24-month-old child understands language. They are very similar.
Walloon, as I understand it, you are somehow related to the edubiz. You must be familiar with a body of literature that suggests, with ample evidence, that the human brain is comprised of features that are capable of attending to and dealing with a grammar - regardless of the particular language spoken. I am not a linguist, nor a child development specialist, by any means, but I know that by 24 months, the human child has exercised a great deal of this part of the brain and has generated hundreds, if not thousands, of structures for meanings, has probably created words, if not sentences of his own, and has begun to master the basics of the language in which he has been brought up. At an equivalent stage in the development of a dog - what would that be? 4 months? 8 months? A dog is learning commands, maybe becoming familiar with some tones of voice that indicate praise and displeasure. In a few years, that dog will have advanced somewhat. There is almost no parity in the two. The dog has no brain function for grammar. The dog is not capable of managing language. If your two year old is functioning linguistically at the level of your dog, you have more trouble than you realize, no insult intended.
Here is a link to an article about how dogs pick up social cues better than chimps. If they can pick up suck subtle cues, I fail to see what is so odd about them picking up the meaing of certain words.
We tested our border collie by using some words he knows while facing away from him, careful to have no inflection. He got them every time. So, I’ve already done Lissa’s exp[eriment. He can also abstract behaviors. When he was young, we taught him to sit at each street corner. Not long after, he start to sit in the middle of a block when he wanted to cross to check something out.
Dogs can be taught to refuse commands in certain situations. Guide dogs are taught to refuse their master’s command to cross the street if a car is coming. This may be done from cues, but certainly requires reasoning far more advanced than simple stimulus response training.
Considering that we’ve forced dog evolution along these lines for tens of thousands of years, it would be odd if they didn’t have this ability.
I am comparing the language comprehension skills of an intelligent adult dog with those of the typical 24-month-old child. Obviously, dogs don’t have speech capability.
At 24 months, a child will have reached a speaking vocabulary of about between 175 and 195 words, with standard deviations in the range of 70 to 80 words. Likewise, an intelligent adult dog can understand up to 200 words.
Hers’s one. Can you name another?
He understands words that are the names for objects. To compare a dog’s comprehension of languaqe to that of a child based on numbers of words understood is disingenuous at best. A two year old child is just beginning to put words together in different ways that have totally different meanings from the original words. Can you show me one example of a dog doing that?
Let me re-ask a couple of questions no one has answered. When you said this
I asked this
I also made this comment
which went unchallenged. Finally, this predictionn has not come to pass.
I think dogs understand more than we give them credit for… I have 2 ‘smart dog’ anecdotes to share:
Background: Dog is a mix, 1/2 MinPin, 1/2 Jack Russell… a little over 2 now.
1.) When running (she’s a thief) with a large fedX envelope that she was tripping over (the envelope kept getting under her feet) she stopped, folded the envelope in half, picked it up at the fold, then continued running with it.
2.) She’s a chewer, and she knows certian things will be taken away from her… many times she runs with them… 2 seperate occasions: first, shes running with her ‘treat’, runs around the couch (just out of site) drops the item, then continues to run… stops at teh other end of the couch to wait for me as if to say “I aint got nuthin”. Second: Chewing on a different “treat”, when I asked her what she had “whatcha got there” she dropped the one item, hid it under her paw and started chewing on an official treat, then once I said “good girl” and turned away, she went back to her hidden treat… (a cough drop)…
She certainly does understand many words and combinations, and she desperately trys to communicate things… these sounds cannot simply be growls/barks, but you ‘know’ she’s saying something…
Oh, and she likes to go “bye bye”…
The language ability of a 24 month old child outstrip any adult dog by miles. The number of words an intelligent dog can “understand” had very little to do with language comprehension. Contrapuntal has posed a few questions that have gone unanswered along those lines. Anyone who proposes that a dog’s ability to understand language is comparable to a human’s, based on the number of words responded to is making a huge mistake. The language ability of the human brain is what sets it apart from all the other animals. It’s an enormous difference and can’t be reduced in this case to the number of words that appear to be recognized by a dog or uttered by a 2 year old.
(Walloon, I thought I remembered reading that you worked for an educational think tank. My error - sorry.)
The only problem with this is the Clever Hans syndrome. Clever Hans’s trainer had no *idea *he was giving cues to the horse and actually probably tried *not *to do so… All I’m saying is that it’s extremely difficult to rid yourself of any inflection or watchful tension. Trying to have no inflection would give out cues that something’s up.
Does he react when he hears those words on TV or from another person?
I’m wracking my brain to come up with a better test, and I think that this might work: Set up a camcorder and record yourself while you’re having a concersation with a friend while the dog is in the room. Likely, the key words your dog knows would be sprinkled in the conversation. (As in “Jody went out with Mike, and man, did they have a ball.”) And hopefully, you’d be so attuned to the conversation that you’d forget that you’re experimenting. Instead of watching the dog as you’re experimenting (which would make you have tension the dog could detect) you would then be able to see his reactions on film without your own expectations aciddentally tainting the results.
I’m also wondering about the “foreign ears” factor. When I was in school, I was taking Spanish classes. A guy from Mexico was in the class because he thought it would help with his English lessons. He told me that the hardest part of learning English was the fact that we spoke so fast that our words blended together. I laughed because my most-used phrase at the time was “mas dispachio, por favor.” If the Spanish speaker went slowly and ennunciated every word, I could understand much better, but conversation at normal speed left me only able to pick out a word here or there.
I’m wondering if dogs would be the same. When I’m telling a story, like narrating the action I saw at a baseball game, I’m sure my words bleed into one another to where “the ball” sounds like “thuhball”. When I speak to my dog, I say, “Go get your ball” clearly stressing the last word.
Guide dogs are the geniuses of the canine world. The vast majority of dogs just aren’t smart enough. My husband was involved in a guide dog program. Only a small percentage of the candidates made it to guide dog school, and only a few of those graduated. Just like all human beings of normal intelligence can do mathematics, but guys like Stephen Hawking are rare.
I’d like to add that there’s a vast difference in dog uunderstanding with different types of words. Nouns work well, as long as they refer to physical objects the dog can see and smell: Ball, sock, bone. Verbs dealing with doggie action - run, fetch, sit - work well too, as do words dealing with directions: here, there, left, right.
And while I’m one of the people in this tread who claims that dogs are capable of a (very limited) ability to piece togeter more complex information from pieces of human speak (My example was “Search for Zorro”, which he managed like a charm and made me proud, even though he had never had these two ideas put together before), it’s still a question of basic skills, dealing with things that are pertinent to a dog.
But most of the time, when I point at something, trying to fix his attention on that, he’ll focus on my finger.
I did, a decade ago.
Contrapuntal, I don’t know how my dog would react if I said “go for a slide in the bar?” or “get the outside ball tomorrow”. He’s been dead for years. I suspect that, like most 24-month-old children, he would have look puzzled.
Yeah, they don’t seem to get pointing. In my house, it generally goes something like this:
“The ball rolled under the couch.” I point.
Dog wags her tail and stares at my finger as if expecting it to eject a biscuit.
“No, under the couch! There! Over there!” I stab my finger in the direction.
Dog tilts her head at my bizarre behavior. Her attention is totally focused on my strange hand gestures and she has probably lost all interest in the ball at this point.
I get up and go point at the ball. The dog sniffs and licks my finger. I actually have to get down and tap the ball. Dog rejoices at being reunited with her toy.
They do show some signs of independent thinking. Without ever having been trained to do so, one of my dogs once brought me a leash to indicate she wanted to go outside. I was pretty impressed by that. (I pointed it out to my husband, thinking it was an example of either an attempt at symbolic communication or tool use, but he thinks it’s probably still just conditioning-- that the dog knew the leash was involved in the act of going outside and so went to get it to “trigger” the act.)
My other dog is now working on the Doorknob Principle. She understands that it does something to open the door, and has even attempted swatting it with her paws (prompting me to tease her about lacking opposable thumbs) but isn’t quite sure what to do.
Ours does this too… especially if shes been left alone for any length of time… she’ll bark/wag thru the side window, then when we open the screen door she’ll disapear from the window and you’ll hear her pawing at the doorknob… quite cute, and one very good reason not to get the handle type!
Anecdote:
My MIL’s puppy has figured out that the faucet on the back of the house controls the sprinkler in the back lawn. Her understanding is fortunately incomplete. She doesn’t turn it on by herself, but if the spray doesn’t please her, she’ll go “adjust” it. By that I mean she’ll paw at the faucet and turn it with her mouth until something changes.
That’s the downside to having an intelligent dog. They keep trying until they figure it out, and they don’t mind leaving claw marks on the woodwork to do it.
These kinds of dogs respond best to the clicker training method, by the way. Just like people, they seem to feel proud* of themselves when they figure something out and the clicker method capitalizes on that.
- Whenever my Polaris figures out how to free a bone which was stuck under the furniture or other little puzzle, she makes a “victory lap” around the room to show off her prize to everyone.
Cool story.
No snarkiness intended, but your evidence for dogs’ understanding of human language is a)anecdotal, and b)impossible to replicate. Stronger evidence is needed for such a claim.
Since your dog was not a 24 month old child I am puzzled by this phrase–“like most 24 month old children.” If you are attempting to prove that dogs are like most 24 year old children by asserting same, you have simply begged the question.
I’ll try to set up a good experiment. He does pick up walk out of a stream of conversation not related to walking, and he understands my daughters when they come home from college. I don’t think he pays any attention to the TV.
I’m certainly not saying he doesn’t pick up on other cues. When I change my shoes, he has associated this with a walk, so saying walk is quite superfluous.
As another datapoint, when we say Come to our guide dog puppies, with their names, he often comes also.
I’m also wondering about the “foreign ears” factor. When I was in school, I was taking Spanish classes. A guy from Mexico was in the class because he thought it would help with his English lessons. He told me that the hardest part of learning English was the fact that we spoke so fast that our words blended together. I laughed because my most-used phrase at the time was “mas dispachio, por favor.” If the Spanish speaker went slowly and ennunciated every word, I could understand much better, but conversation at normal speed left me only able to pick out a word here or there.
I’m wondering if dogs would be the same. When I’m telling a story, like narrating the action I saw at a baseball game, I’m sure my words bleed into one another to where “the ball” sounds like “thuhball”. When I speak to my dog, I say, “Go get your ball” clearly stressing the last word.
We’ve raised four, and the last one got into the breeder program, and we get to keep her. In fact we puppy sat one of her puppies this weekend. The program we’re in does their own breeding, sometimes exchanging dogs with other programs for diversity. Only half the dogs make it. However, not all are all that smart. We had two labs, both dumb as bricks. They got career change for elbow displasia, not intelligence. We bought a Yuppie Puppie machine for our pet dog, basically a gumball machine with a handle that dispenses treats. He got it in under five seconds. When we knew our first Lab was not going to be a guide, and no longer under the rules, we introduced him to the machine. He never got it, even though our pet dog tried to show him. I think if a dog is too smart they will have trouble being a guide, which involves often sitting for hours under a desk. It would be a terrible job for a border collie. I thought our breeder, a Golden, was too smart to be a good guide, and I’m glad she made it to a nice life bare-pawed and pregnant. 
I think guide dogs work because dogs in general are so well attuned to our social environment. Guides in particular work by voice commands, since you can’t expect a blind person to give consistent hand cues pointed the right way. BTW, though I’m sure dogs recognize words, I don’t think they have grammar.