‘Button’ dogs do understand words — and not just from their humans
Videos of “button dogs” often go viral on social media as they tap soundboards with prerecorded words such as “walk,” “park” or “mom.” But are the pets really communicating or are they just well-trained?
Although new research doesn’t fully answer that question, it begins to explore the world of button dogs and how they react to both the buttons and their humans.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE and conducted by scientists at the University of California at San Diego, is the first in an expected series aimed at ultimately answering the larger question of whether the dogs themselves can learn to communicate their desires by tapping buttons.
Many dog owners insist that the canines can, and offer considerable anecdotal evidence to prove it, although the concept of button dogs has drawn skepticism from those who study dog cognition.
Notably, the new study did not involve dogs pressing buttons; only humans did so.
The facts:
- The first experiment was conducted in person, with researchers visiting 30 dogs’ homes across the country to test their responses to soundboard buttons. The voice on the buttons was that of the owners. An experimenter pressed the buttons while the owner was in another room, then watched the dog for 60 seconds.
- The second experiment involved “citizen science,” with 29 dog owners conducting the trials themselves at home under remote guidance. The owner would either push the same buttons or say the words out loud to the dog without pushing buttons and then observe the dog’s reaction for 60 seconds.
- The dogs were more likely to exhibit “play-related” or “outside-related” behaviors after hearing the relevant words, whether spoken by a human or emitted by the soundboard. “This demonstrates that dogs are, at the very least, capable of learning an association between these words or buttons and their outcomes in the world,” the researchers wrote in the study.
- Dogs didn’t show “food-related” behaviors in response to food-related words, suggesting the dogs either weren’t hungry or didn’t expect food outside of their usual feeding times, according to the study.
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What it means:
The research suggests that dogs can grasp the meaning of specific words and respond appropriately, regardless of whether they hear them from people or whether the words are triggered by someone pressing a button on a prerecorded soundboard.
The researchers said the findings show that the dogs understand the words and aren’t reacting to body-language cues from humans.
“We know that dogs understand quite a few words,” said Federico Rossano, associate professor in the department of cognitive science at the University of California at San Diego. “Yet we needed to run the study to convince some skeptics who thought dogs would not pay attention to the words at all.”
The study shows that the dogs’ responses were not a “Clever Hans effect,” a term originating with an early 20th-century horse in Berlin named Hans. Hans was known for tapping numbers or letters with his hoof in answering questions. It was later revealed that the horse was picking up microscopic facial signals from his handler.
The study shows that the dogs “are paying attention to the words and produce appropriate responses when they hear them,” Rossano said. He added that the team has two more publications under review that look at how dogs are using the buttons.
Several experts on dog behavior said the results aren’t unexpected.
“Dogs act similarly when the button says ‘play’ or ‘out’ as when their person says ‘play’ or ‘out,’ but it’s the owner’s voice on the button, so that is expected,” said Alexandra Horowitz, who heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. “Dogs easily learn that my asking ‘Where’s your ball?’ or a visiting friend asking ‘Where’s your ball?” and my voice on speakerphone asking ‘Where’s your ball?’ mean the same thing.”
Amritha Mallikarjun, a postdoctoral researcher with the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, said the research validates earlier studies that demonstrate dogs pay attention to human speech and can recognize familiar words without additional contextual clues, or even when the voice producing them is unfamiliar.
“Dogs cannot learn language in the same way that humans can, and their communication will be limited as compared to what humans are capable of,” Mallikarjun said. “It is still amazing how humans and dogs have evolved together to understand each other.”
Mallikarjun said it’s important to remember that humans have “a lot of rich linguistic meaning” behind the words we use, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to our dogs. “So if we try to teach dogs more abstract linguistic concepts on buttons, the dog does not necessarily understand the rich linguistic meaning of these words, but rather associates a particular behavior that we do or a particular sequence of events with the utterance,” she said.
Clive D.L. Wynne, professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, said dog cognition differs from how humans perceive words.
“From the dogs’ behavior, the researchers deduced that the dogs ‘understood’ what words related to going outside and playing meant, but not the words for food,” he said. “This ‘understanding’ was the kind of conditioning that Pavlov was familiar with, and you see when you say ‘walkies,’ your dog gets excited for a walk. This isn’t how your child, spouse or co-worker understands language.”
The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of California at Davis, the University of St. Andrews, the University of València and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
The study was supported in part by a $15,000 UC-San Diego Academic Senate research grant, which the university provides to faculty for pilot studies with the hope that they will facilitate bigger grants. The researchers said they received no funding from commercial manufacturers of button boards, which pet parents can buy - from less expensive “starter kits” to more complicated soundboards costing several hundred dollars.
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