Do dogs understand language?

Dogs follow their owner’s instructions but is it because they understand language? Some European researchers have tried to find the answer to this question. People who keep dogs are fond of showing that their dog understands them. They will say, sit and he will sit, they will say eat and he will eat. Even if they say, bring your ball, he will bring the ball. This thing has been surprising scientists as to how this happens. Actually, when a person hears a word in any language, a picture is formed in his mind. Scientists did not yet know whether this happened with animals too or not. In a new study conducted in Hungary, scientists found that dogs can also learn to associate words with pictures. This is called making contextual connections with language.

Dogs have this ability, it was not known about it till now. Identifying things with words “When we talk about things, they are unfamiliar to dogs. They have to learn about things. They are things that are different from their world,” says lead researcher and neuroscientist Mariana Boros. Are from outside.” The study by Boros, who works in the Department of Ethology at the Ottovos Loránd University in Budapest, has been published in the journal ‘Current Biology.’ Boros conducted this study on 18 dogs. In this, their heads were examined to study the activity and process of the dogs’ brain. EEG was done. The owners of the dogs involved in the study listened to an audio clip with the names of things that dogs know, such as a ball or a toy.

After that they were shown the pictures. Once a picture of the same thing whose name was taken was shown and the second time a picture of a different thing was shown. Scientists assessed the activities occurring in the brain of dogs. “Our hypothesis was that if the dog understood the meaning of a given object’s name, it would expect to see the same object when named,” explains Boros. “And if the owner then showed the object something else, its brain would receive the so-called ‘ There will be a ‘surprise reaction’. And we saw that this was what was happening.” Innate ability in dogs? In the study, scientists found that when dogs heard the name of an object they knew, the patterns formed in their brain were different from those when they were shown unknown objects. On this basis, scientists concluded that dogs can also understand words. After listening to them, they create a picture in their brain. Assistant author of the research and cognitive neuroscientist Leela Magyari says that animals of some other species have also shown this ability, but those animals are such which have been trained a lot.

Magyari, an associate professor at Stavanger University in Norway, says that it appears that these abilities are innate in dogs. Scientists have already given such theories that in the development of language, the ability to refer has been acquired not only by humans but also by other creatures. This study has been praised but some experts have also expressed doubts. Clive Wynn, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, wrote about this research on Facebook, saying that it shows that dogs have the ability to respond but they do not know the meaning of specific words. Experts believe that humans started domesticating dogs about 30 thousand years ago and since then these two creatures have been living together. But during this period, whether dogs have developed the ability to understand language or not, it is still not clear. Still, dog owners are confident that their beloved dogs understand everything they say, whether or not images form in their minds. VK/CK.