Animal cognition: Dogs build semantic expectations between spoken words and objects

Micah M Murray; Naomi K Middelmann; Kara D Federmeier

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.045

Animal cognition: Dogs build semantic expectations between spoken words and objects

Curr Biol. 2024 May 6;34(9):R348-R351. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.045.

Authors

Micah M Murray¹, Naomi K Middelmann², Kara D Federmeier³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; The Sense Innovation and Research Center, Lausanne and Sion, Switzerland; Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232, USA. Electronic address: micah.murray@chuv.ch.
² The Sense Innovation and Research Center, Lausanne and Sion, Switzerland; Pediopsychiatry Service, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA; Departments of Linguistics and Kinesiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA; Program in Neuroscience and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA.

PMID: 38714162
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.045

Abstract

A recent study has used scalp-recorded electroencephalography to obtain evidence of semantic processing of human speech and objects by domesticated dogs. The results suggest that dogs do comprehend the meaning of familiar spoken words, in that a word can evoke the mental representation of the object to which it refers.

MeSH terms

Animals
Cognition* / physiology
Comprehension / physiology
Dogs / psychology
Electroencephalography
Humans
Semantics*
Speech / physiology
Speech Perception / physiology