A new study by scientists at Emory University and published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience suggests dogs possess a basic understanding of the words they’ve been taught to associate with objects. After training 12 very good dogs of different breeds over the course of two to six months to discern between two toys based on their respective names, the researchers then utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study whether they possessed a basic ability to differentiate between human speech they were taught to remember and new or unfamiliar words.
[---]
Compared with previous research, this study is exciting because it focuses on whether dogs can understand human speech, rather than words combined with intonation and/or gestures, Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns, a senior author of the study, said in a statement.
“We know that dogs have the capacity to process at least some aspects of human language since they can learn to follow verbal commands,” he said. “Previous research, however, suggests dogs may rely on many other cues to follow a verbal command, such as gaze, gestures and even emotional expressions from their owners.”
- More Here
[---]
Compared with previous research, this study is exciting because it focuses on whether dogs can understand human speech, rather than words combined with intonation and/or gestures, Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns, a senior author of the study, said in a statement.
“We know that dogs have the capacity to process at least some aspects of human language since they can learn to follow verbal commands,” he said. “Previous research, however, suggests dogs may rely on many other cues to follow a verbal command, such as gaze, gestures and even emotional expressions from their owners.”
- More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment