Call That a Ball? Dogs Learn to Associate Words With Objects Differently Than Humans Do

According to Science Daily, dogs learn to associate words with objects differently than humans do. Humans between the ages of two and three, begin to associate words with shape. If you teach a toddler the word ball, they will associate other round objects as a ball. While dogs on the other hand associate words with the size and texture of an object. For example, most dogs refer to all of their toys as the same thing. They are all around the same size and most are made out of the same textures or groups of textures. They explain that earlier research has shown that dogs learn by category.

This study was focused on Gable, a five year old border collie. After a short period of training, Gable learned to associate the name of an object with its size, identifying other objects of similar size by the same name. After a longer period of exposure to both a name and an object, the dog learned to associate a word to other objects of similar textures, but not to objects of similar shape. This study shows for the first time that there is a qualitative difference in word comprehension in the dog compared to word comprehension in humans.

This article really interested me because it's amazing how dog's react to different things, and it was interesting to read about how they actually click the words they hear to what they actually think about.