Dogs with a large vocabulary of object labels learn new labels by overhearing like 1.5-year-old infants
Abstract
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.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Child and Animal Learning Development
Human-Animal Interaction Studies
Primate Behavior and Ecology
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Science
- Publisher
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Volume
- 391
- Issue
- 6781
- Pages
- 160–163
- Publication date
- 8 January 2026
- Language
- EN