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Needle, a cheerful miniature schnauzer that I had as a child, would become a ball of indescribable noise and anger whenever she saw a dog named Puma. She hated Puma, she would lash out, bark and growl. Just whispering the name “puma” elicited the same reaction, as if the sound and the idea of the dog it represented were clearly connected deep within Needle’s mind.
The connection between a word and a mental representation of its meaning is called “referential understanding,” and for a very long time we believed that dogs lacked this ability. Now, a study published by a team of Hungarian researchers shows we may have been wrong.
practice makes perfect
The idea that dogs cannot form associations with language in a referential manner arose from behavioral studies in which dogs were asked to perform selective retrieval tasks. The canine had several objects placed in front of it (toys, bones, etc.) and had to bring something specifically designated by the owner.
Marianna Boros, a researcher at the Communication Neurobehavioral Laboratory at Eötvös Lorand University in Budapest, said: “In a laboratory setting, dogs behave randomly even though their owners claim to know the names of objects.” And I took whatever I could grab first.” Hungary “But the problem is, there are hundreds of things that can disturb a dog if he hasn’t been properly trained for the task. Sometimes I don’t understand the task. There are so many distractions.”
To get around the distraction problem, her team used EEG brain monitoring to see if dogs could passively understand words. In humans, the brainwave measurement that is considered a clear sign of semantic reasoning is the N400 effect.
“Study on the N400 was first published in 1981, and since then hundreds of studies have replicated it, adding different stimuli. Typically, subjects are shown images of objects and given a matching or non-matching name. Say the name. When we measure brain activity in the EEG, we see that it looks different in congruent and incongruent scenarios,” said Dr. Scientist, also at the Institute for Neurobehavioral Communication and co-author of the study. Lila Majali explained. (Majari explained that this difference is called the Her N400 effect because it peaks about 400 milliseconds after the object is presented.)
The only change the team made to adapt the standard N400 test to dogs was to switch up the order of the stimuli. First, the word was uttered, and then the matching or mismatching object was displayed. “Because when they hear a word that activates a mental representation of an object, they expect to see it. The sound made them more attentive,” Majali said.
timing is everything
In the experiment, the dog lay on a mat with an electroencephalogram attached to its head in a room with the experimenter or another dog owner. The owners of the experimental dogs were separated by a glass plate with controllable opacity. “It was important because brain waves are something we study.” [can] “We time the moment of stimulus presentation very precisely,” Boros said.
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The owner says something that will catch the dog’s interest, such as “Kun-kun, look!” A voice saying “Ball!” was recorded and played through speakers to each dog. Then, 2,000 milliseconds after each dog hears that sentence, the window sill becomes transparent and the owner appears with a matching or mismatched toy. “Each test lasted as long as the dog was willing to participate. The moment the dog started to sit up or look away, we stopped the test, allowed the dog to leave the mat, and the session ended with play. . Everything was very dog friendly,” Boros said.
