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Can Dogs Understand Human Language? What the Science Says About “Dognition”

Recent studies have shown just how smart dogs truly are!

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The act of talking to a dog might strike some as absurd. Sure, pups respond to commands: “sit,” “down,” “stay.” But can your dog really follow the train of human language? Can they literally grasp phrases or dozens of unique words? Do they have “dognition”? Pet owners have long insisted this was the case. Read on to see what scientists have to say about whether your pup actually understands what you’re saying.

The meaning of dognition

While many chalk up this kind of impression to illusion, research reveals there’s something to it. Are dogs really grasping human language? It turns out the answer is, to some degree, yes.

In The Genius of Dogs (written with research scientist Vanessa Woods), Duke University evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare, PhD offers a host of evidence demonstrating that dogs are more attuned to human communication than many people assume. It’s part of what Dr. Hare has dubbed “dognition.”

“No other species besides humans has demonstrated the ability to learn the meaning of words so quickly and with so much flexibility,” says Dr. Hare. “Dogs definitely understand more than we give them credit for.”

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Woman and dog looking at each other at table
Spiderplay/Getty

An impressive example of dognition

Dr. Hare points to an astonishingly well-documented example of dognition — a dog named Chaser who learned the names of over 800 stuffed toys, 116 balls, 26 frisbees and 100 plastic objects.

“There were no duplicates, and all the objects differed in size, weight, texture, design and material. To be exact, Chaser learned the names of 1,022 objects,” Dr. Hare explains. “She was tested every day, and just to be sure she was not ‘cheating’ by getting hints from anyone, every month she had to do a blind test where she had to fetch objects in a different room, out of sight of her owner.” Dr. Hare noted, “Even after Chaser learned over 1,000 words, there was no decrease in the rate at which she learned new words.”

Chaser the border collie, who was known for her dognition
Chaser the Border Collie became well-known for her impressive dognition@chaserthebordercollie/Instagram

“Even more impressive, the objects Chaser had learned were organized in a variety of categories in her mind,” Dr. Hare says. “Even though the objects came in all different shapes and sizes, without any training, Chaser could distinguish between objects that were her toys and objects that were non-toys.”

Canine comprehension

Although Chaser is a remarkable example of dognition because of the sheer number of words in her “vocabulary,” researchers have documented other examples of not only how facile many dogs are at understanding words but how they often remember or figure out what human words mean, even in more than one language.

Author John Steinbeck, writing about his poodle Charley, claimed the dog was bilingual. “He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little Poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.”

This might sound like a dog-loving storyteller’s exaggeration — but it is likely true. “There is no evidence yet that dogs understand sentences,” Dr. Hare says. “But names of objects in a foreign language? No problem!”

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Writer John Steinbeck with his dog, Charley, in 1962
Writer John Steinbeck with his dog, Charley, in 1962Bettmann/Getty

How to encourage dognition in your pet

In England, University of York psychologists Alex Benjamin, PhD, and Katie Slocombe, PhD, have a professional and personal interest in human to dog communication, called dog-directed speech (DDS). Dr. Benjamin’s research has focused on how dogs communicate with both humans and other canines. Dr. Slocombe previously studied communication in primates.

And both have pet dogs. Dr. Slocombe’s fur kid is Suzy, an Irish setter. Dr. Benjamin’s dog is Cooper, a spaniel. They decided to team up on a study to see if how people talk to dogs impacts how canines respond. “I relished the opportunity to work with dogs — they are so much easier to work with than chimpanzees — and due to dogs’ domestication history, they have some really interesting communication skills we wanted to investigate,” Dr. Slocombe explains.

Husky puppy looking up at owner
FreshSplash/Getty

The researchers conducted a series of speech tests with 37 adult dogs. The animals were given the chance to listen to a person (not their owner) using dog-directed speech — words and phrases the canines were likely familiar with. These included, “You’re a good dog” and “Shall we go for a walk?” The dogs also listened to a person using adult-directed speech (ADS), saying things without any specific dog-directed content, like “I saw a movie last night.”

The results, published in the journal Animal Cognition, showed the dogs were more likely to want to interact and hang out with someone who spoke to them using dog-related content instead of a person talking about things that weren’t apparently of interest to the dogs — but only if the person spoke in an animated, enthusiastic voice.

Dog-relevant content in a dog-directed voice

Bottom line: What piqued the canines’ interest in what people said to them was both the words they used and the way the humans talked to the dogs — what Dr. Benjamin and Dr. Slocombe call “dog speak.”

“We found that it’s not only the way you talk (higher pitch, larger changes in pitch, similar to infant-directed speech) but also the content of what you are saying that were important to drive these effects,” Dr. Slocombe explains. “Dog-relevant content said in a dog-directed voice were most effective at capturing dogs’ attention.”

Dr. Slocombe and Dr. Benjamin hope the results of their dognition research will be useful for pet owners interacting with their dogs, and also for veterinary professionals and rescue workers trying to create calm and gain the attention of dogs by using “dog speak.”

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Woman outside with Golden Retriever
skynesher/Getty

“Our experiments gave the chance for dogs to listen to and then approach unfamiliar experimenters, and we found that dog-directed speech resulted in greater attention and more affiliative approaches to those individuals. So when interacting with unfamiliar dogs, using dog-directed speech seems like an effective way to communicate with them and may facilitate an affiliative interaction” between you and the dog, Dr. Slocombe says.

The duo’s compelling research also suggests the tone of voice a person uses — speaking in a more enthusiastic voice to dogs — may promote greater relationship-building between a dog and its owner, much like how “baby talk” is a common part of human infant-and-adult bonding. “We don’t know if owners who routinely use dog-directed speech with their own dogs have a closer or more affectionate bond with their dogs,” Dr. Slocombe says. “But it’s an interesting idea for future research.”

Dognition and body language

Working dogs may be the most skilled at reading human gestures, but all dogs are attuned to human body language because they’ve evolved to read our communicative signals, according to Duke University evolutionary anthropologist and dog-cognition researcher Dr. Hare.

“We often take it for granted that a quick point of our fingers, or even feet, can send dogs scampering in the direction of a lost ball or a hidden morsel of food, but this ability is extremely specialized. Even one of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, cannot read our gestures as well as dogs can,” Dr. Hare says. “In the same way that preverbal infants start paying attention to adults when they point, dogs understand that when we gesture, we are trying to cooperate and communicate with them.”

Woman pointing her finger to dog
Guido Mieth/Getty

Dogs don’t usually waste their time watching every move of their human, either. Instead, dogs are most skilled at interpreting your body language if you pay specific attention to them. For example, your pooch is more likely to follow your pointing gesture if you make eye contact before gesturing and if you alternate your gaze between the dog and the direction you’re pointing, Hare explains. Dogs are also more likely to follow your gestures if you use a higher pitched, enthusiastic voice to attract their attention before gesturing — even if you don’t call their name.

A version of this article appeared in our partner magazine, Inside Your Dog’s Mind, in 2021.


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