Despite Their Acute Sense of Hearing, Dogs May Never Learn That Every Sound of a Word Matters

Despite their outstanding acoustic capabilities, pets do not take care of distinctions in between words which vary just in one speech noise (e.g. pet vs dig), according to a brand-new research study by Hungarian scientists of the MTA-ELTE ‘Lendület’ Neuroethology of Communication Research Group at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (ELTE) determining brain activity with non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) on awake pets. This may be a reason the variety of words pets find out to acknowledge generally stays really low throughout their life. The research study is released in Royal Society Open Science.

Dogs can differentiate human speech noises (e.g. “d,” “o” and “g”) and there are resemblances in the neuronal processing of words in between pets and human beings. However, the majority of the pets can find out a couple of words just throughout their lives even if they reside in a human household and are surrounded by human speech. Magyari and her associates assumed that in spite of pet’s human-like acoustic capabilities for evaluating speech noises, pets may be less prepared to take care of all distinctions in between speech sounds when they listen to words.

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a frequently utilized method in human scientific and research study studies and it has actually been likewise effectively used on tranquilized, sleeping or awake however experienced pets. However, in this research study, the scientists determined EEG on awake pets with no particular training. Credit: Elodie Ferrando

To test this concept, the scientists established a treatment for determining electrical activity in the brain non-invasively on awake, inexperienced, household pets. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a frequently utilized method in human scientific and research study studies and it has actually been likewise effectively used on tranquilized, sleeping or awake however experienced pets. However, in this research study, the scientists determined EEG on awake pets with no particular training.

Researchers welcomed pets and their owners to the laboratory. After the pet got knowledgeable about the space and the experimenters, the experimenters asked the owner to muffle a bed mattress together with her pet as it would be a relaxation time for them. Then, the experimenters put electrodes on the pet’s head and repaired it with a tape. With the electrodes on, pets listened to tape-recorded guideline words they understood (e.g. “sit”), to comparable however nonsense words (e.g. “sut”), and to really various rubbish words (e.g. “bep”).

“The electroencephalography is a sensitive method not only to brain activity but also to muscle-movements. Therefore, we had to make sure that dogs tense their muscles as little as possible during measurement. We also wanted to include any type of family dogs in our study not only specially trained animals. Therefore, we decided that instead of training our dog-participants, we will ask them just to relax. Of course, some of the dogs who came to the experiment could not settle down and did not let us do the measurement. But the dropout rate from the study was similar to the dropout rate in EEG studies with human infants. It was also an exciting process for us to learn how we can create a relaxing and safe atmosphere in the lab for both the dogs and their owners,” states lead author Lilla Magyari, postdoctoral scientist at Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary.

The analysis of the taped electrical brain activity revealed that pet brains plainly and rapidly discriminated the recognized words from the really various rubbish words beginning with 200 ms after the start of the words. This result remains in line with comparable research studies on human beings which reveal that the human brain reacts in a different way to significant and nonsense words currently within a couple of hundred milliseconds. But the pets’ brains made no distinction in between recognized words and those nonsense words that varied in a single speech noise just. This pattern is more comparable to the outcomes of try outs human babies who are around 14-months. Infants end up being effective in processing phonetic information of words, which is an essential requirement for establishing a big vocabulary, in between 14 and 20 months. But more youthful babies do not process phonetic information of words in specific speculative and word knowing scenarios in spite of the truth that babies have the ability to separate speech sounds perceptually within weeks after birth.

“Similarly to the case of human infants, we speculate that the similarity of dogs’ brain activity for instruction words they know and for similar nonsense words reflects not perceptual constraints but attentional and processing biases. Dogs might not attend to all details of speech sound when they listen to words. Further research could reveal whether this could be a reason that incapacitates dogs from acquiring a sizable vocabulary,” concludes Attila Andics, primary detective of the MTA-ELTE ‘Lendület’ Neuroethology of Communication Research Group.

Reference: “Event-related potentials reveal limited readiness to access phonetic details during word processing in dogs” by Lilla Magyari, Zsófia Huszár, Andrea Turzó and Attila Andics, 9 December 2020, Royal Society Open Science.
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.200851

This research study was released on the 9th of December in Royal Society Open Science entitled “Event-related potentials reveal limited readiness to access phonetic details during word processing in dogs,” composed by Lilla Magyari, Zsófia Huszár, Andrea Turzó and Attila Andics. This research study was moneyed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Lendület Program), the National Research, Development and Innovation Office and the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE).