A new study suggests that smart dogs are adept at eavesdropping. The research published in Science found that so-called "Gifted Word Learner" dogs can pick up the names of new toys simply by overhearing their owners talk to other people. "Our findings show that the socio-cognitive processes enabling word learning from overheard speech are not uniquely human," says study co-author Dr. Shany Dror of Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, per Popular Science. "Under the right conditions, some dogs present behaviors strikingly similar to those of young children." These standout dogs, identified in earlier research for their knack for learning object names, aren't limited to any single breed, though border collies and border collie mixes tend to perform well.
For the new study, researchers with Hungary's Genius Dog Challenge tested 10 GWL dogs in two scenarios, per the AP. In one, owners spoke directly to their pets while playing with two new toys, repeatedly using the toys' names. In the other, the dogs sat nearby while owners discussed the toys with another person, never addressing the dogs at all. Across several short sessions, dogs heard each toy's name for a total of eight minutes. Later, the toys were moved to another room, and owners asked their dogs to fetch specific items by name. Seven of the 10 dogs succeeded in both scenarios—choosing correctly 80% of the time when taught directly and 100% of the time when they only overheard the words.
A second experiment tested whether the dogs could handle a delay between seeing an object and hearing its name. Owners first showed the dogs the toys, then put them in a bucket and used the labels only after the toys were out of sight. Most dogs still learned the names, indicating they can link words to objects even when the reference isn't immediate. The team notes that GWL dogs appear to be rare and probably reflect a mix of genetics and intensive interaction with humans. "We do not suggest that all dogs learn in this way—far from it," says Dror.
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