Johnson: Study: Dogs understand more than we thought

“Treat”, “bed”, “toy” — some basic words you know without a doubt will get a reaction if said in the presence of your pooch, especially the ones associated with stuff they really like.

They understand so well, in fact, that for some dogs, the only way for the humans in the house to communicate without setting off an explosion of excited jumping, whining and bouncing is to spell “g-o w-a-l-k t-h-e d-o-g!”

In search of ponies

Anyone who lives with dogs knows that they do understand our ways, our mood, tone of voice, expectations and our language, or at least parts of it anyway — and why wouldn’t they. After living with us as functional family members often for years, dogs are bound to get the hang of things eventually.

To what extent they understand, however, is a matter of debate.

Absent their ability to speak back to us, just how much they grasp becomes a matter of speculation, and for some owners — you know, the ones that have full conversations with their dogs, including acting out the dog’s side of the exchange — might even be an exercise in imagination.

The debate over a dog’s grasp of human language is often a question of whether it’s the words, or the tone of voice that they truly understand, with good reason.

Indeed, many an owner has had fun at their dog’s expense. “Oh you are so darned ugly, yes you are!” and all kinds of other not-so-nice things said in the right tone can get just about any pooch wagging and smiling, proof that it's the tone they respond to rather than the words themselves.

Or is it?

In a study that might (and probably should) change human understanding of what communication dogs comprehend, a group of Hungarian researchers released a report Tuesday stating it’s a combination of words and tone of voice that dogs respond to.

After training 13 dogs to lie still in an fMRI brain scanner, scientists were able to observe and record their brain activity in response to cues aimed at determining their understanding.

Audio recordings of the dogs’ trainer — speaking words of praise with praising intonation and neutral intonation as well as meaningless words with praising and neutral intonation — were played while each dog’s corresponding brain activity was documented.

Interestingly, the images researchers captured revealed that dogs prefer to process words that mean something to them on the left side of the brain and use the right side of their brain — identified in previous studies as the center for processing emotional sounds — to discriminate tone of voice or emotion.

This division of brain resources makes dogs more like us than we may realize because, as the researchers noted, humans too rely on the left side of the brain to process meaning and the right side to process intonation, integrating the two sets of information to reach a combined meaning.

Their surprising find, however, was that while the reward center of the brain activated when a dog heard praise, the reward activation only occurred if the praise included both a recognized word and a praising tone of voice.

It’s evidence that like humans, not only do dogs reach a unified conclusion by blending right and left brain information, they also understand words separate from tone and vice versa but only truly believe when words are accompanied by the correct emotion.

If dogs really do understand more than we think, next time the dog wags and gets excited at a word-tone fake out, it might be dog laughter you’re witnessing because he knows what you don’t — the joke’s on you.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:

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