Dogs and Babies Have a Lot More in Common Than You Think, New Study Shows · Kinship

As a dog trainer, I often tell people to think of their dogs like a toddler in terms of their mental capacity to learn and retain information (and sometimes have tantrums!), but this comparison might be more accurate than I ever realized. 

A new study published last week in Cell Press’ Current Biology Journal found that dogs learn through play, similar to human children. What does this mean? They can successfully categorize objects in their environment based on what that object does (e.g., is it used for fetch or for tug?).

The dogs involved in this study were regular pet dogs, but they were categorized as “gifted word learners.” This is defined as dogs who, through normal play interactions with their parents, have learned the names of a large number of different toys and retain the names of those toys over time. 

The dogs participating in the study were able to naturally process sentences involving objects they had learned the names of and were able to make associations between similar objects. At a young age, human children are capable of performing sorting based on functional classification of objects, and researchers wanted to know if this was a skill that was specific to humans or if dogs could do the same. 

How the study worked 

Researchers developed a study to test if dogs could understand and determine the appropriate use of new objects based on how they would be used. For this study, the “gifted-learner dogs” were taught two ways to categorize the toys based on how their guardians would play with them. Some toys were used for fetch, and some toys were pulled in a game of tug. 

To teach these two categorizations, the researchers had the dog parents teach them the same way that children learn through their everyday play interactions. During these play sessions, the “fetch” category toys would be used for playing fetch, and the “tug” category toys would be used for tug. 

In the study, the dogs were given four toys and were taught their names. They had no similarities to each other but were all used for playing fetch. Dogs were then given four different toys again, with no similarities to each other or to the previous four toys, and those were used for playing tug. 

Dogs were then asked to bring toys to their parents not by name, but from the categories of how they were played (tug versus fetch). Then, new objects were introduced that didn’t have any common features with the previous toys. Without labeling the toys to the dogs, the humans would engage their dog in play with the toy either by tossing or pulling. For the final classification test, dogs were asked to retrieve one of the new objects based on the type of play. 

The results 

The study found that, similar to young children, dogs were able to understand two different toy categories based on how their people played with them and successfully sort new objects into those categories. This is the first time researchers have found dogs can make this kind of connection. 

And here’s the important part: Dogs learned these skills organically during play and interaction with their humans, not through intensive training sessions. (Dog parents reported spending five to 30 minutes a day playing with their pups.) Previously, a non-human animal’s capacity to classify objects without similar features was only seen in what what researchers described as “language-trained animals” like African Gray Parrots and Apes. The previous studies were also primarily focused on individual animals of that species, not a group of animals.

How to try this at home

Do you think your dog could make these same associations with toys and types of play? If your they aren’t already a “gifted word learner,” the first step is to start teaching your dog the different names of toys to build up their vocabulary. Then you can go from there.

• Step 1: Pick a toy your dog enjoys and decide on a name for that toy. Put the toy in front of your dog and ask them to get the toy by name. Offer lots of praise when they get the toy and engage your dog in play. 

• Step 2: Repeat during several training/play sessions, making sure to use the name of the toy while playing. 

• Step 3: Repeat with other toys, giving them unique names. 

• Step 4: The better your dog gets, you can start to ask them to bring one toy versus the other. If your dog brings the “wrong” toy, redirect them to the “correct” toy and start to play with that toy. 

Once your dog knows the names of different toys, you can try to mirror the experiment by teaching your dog that different toys have different games and functions associated with them, like “tug” and “fetch,” to see if they can make the association that certain toys equal a specific sort of play. 

Both of my dogs already have a lot of fluency and familiarity with the names of different toys, so I’m excited to give this a go. After all, I already knew they were geniuses.