Toddlers can pick up new words just by overhearing conversations. Now, new research suggests that some intelligent dogs can expand their vocabulary in just the same way.
Children as young as 18 months old can learn labels for objects by listening to other people’s exchanges, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. They do this by monitoring the speakers’ gaze, picking up communicative cues and extracting key words from sentences.
Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Hungary wanted to find out whether dogs that were “gifted” at learning toy names could also learn new words simply by eavesdropping.
These gifted dogs were assessed and identified when their owners, after seeing social media posts or s, contacted the researchers to say they believe their dog knows the names of toys.
For the study, owners of 10 gifted dogs first introduced two new toys and named them, repeatedly saying the toy names while interacting directly with their pet.
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