Dogs with a large vocabulary of object labels learn new labels by overhearing like 1.5-year-old infants | Science
Neuroscientists investigated whether dogs can learn new words not through direct instruction, but by "eavesdropping" on human conversations, much like young children do. The study focused on a small group of dogs "gifted" for word learning (Gifted Word Learner dogs)—animals with an unusually large vocabulary of object names. Such dogs are rare and are not associated with a specific breed or living conditions.
The results showed that these dogs are able to learn new object names by observing their owners' interactions, even when the conversation is not addressed directly. Moreover, the dogs successfully formed associations between a word and an object, even when they were not presented simultaneously. In terms of learning efficiency, some dogs were as effective as, and sometimes even superior to, human children around eighteen months old.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq5474
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