Dogs with a large vocabulary of object labels learn new labels by overhearing like 1.5-year-old infants

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dror, Shany; Miklosi, Adam; Morvai, Boglarka; Nastase, Andreea-Silvia; Fugazza, Claudia
• 署名单位: University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna; Eotvos Lorand University; MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group; Eotvos Lorand University
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adq5474
• 发表日期: 2026-01-08
• 页码: 160-163
• 关键词: HUMAN-COMMUNICATION; CANIS-FAMILIARIS; WORD; attention; sensitivity

摘要

Children as young as 18 months can acquire novel words by overhearing third-party interactions. Demonstrating similar learning processes in nonhuman species would indicate that the social-cognitive skills supporting this process are not exclusively human but may have evolved, or can develop, in other species, offering valuable insights into the origins of language-related cognition. In this study, we demonstrated that a small group of Gifted Word Learner dogs, which possess an extensive vocabulary of object labels, can learn new labels by overhearing their owners' interactions. Moreover, we show that these dogs can acquire novel object-label mappings even when the labels and objects are not presented simultaneously. Taken together, these results suggest that Gifted Word Learner dogs possess sociocognitive skills functionally parallel to those of 18-month-old children.