Summary: Dogs trained to use soundboards can combine two-word buttons purposefully to communicate needs and desires, rather than randomly or by imitating their owners. Researchers analyzed over 260,000 button presses from 152 dogs, finding meaningful combinations like “outside + potty” occurring more often than chance.
The data suggests dogs use soundboards to enhance communication with humans, potentially strengthening bonds. Future research will explore if dogs can express abstract ideas, like past events or missing objects, through these soundboards.
Key Facts:
- Intentional Combinations: Dogs’ two-word button presses, like “outside + potty,” indicate deliberate communication.
- Beyond Imitation: Dogs’ button use significantly differed from human button-press patterns, suggesting independent thought.
- Potential for Abstract Ideas: Future studies aim to determine if dogs can reference past or future events using soundboards.
Source: UCSD
A new study from UC San Diego’s Comparative Cognition Lab shows that dogs trained to use soundboards to “talk” are capable of making two-word button combinations that go beyond random behavior or simple imitation of their owners.
Published in the journal Scientific Reports from Springer Nature, the study analyzed data from 152 dogs over 21 months, capturing more than 260,000 button presses – 195,000 of which were made by the dogs themselves.
“This is the first scientific study to analyze how dogs actually use soundboards,” said lead researcher Federico Rossano, associate professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego and director of the Comparative Cognition Lab.
“The findings reveal that dogs are pressing buttons purposefully to express their desires and needs, not just imitating their owners. When dogs combine two buttons, these sequences are not random but instead seem to reflect specific requests.”
The study observed that the buttons most commonly used were related to essential needs, with words such as “outside,” “treat,” “play,” and “potty.” Notably, combinations like “outside” + “potty” or “food” + “water” were used in meaningful ways, occurring more frequently than expected by chance.
For dog owners, this research offers a new way to better understand their pets’ needs.
“While dogs already communicate some of these needs,” Rossano said.
“Soundboards could allow for more precise communication. Instead of barking or scratching at the door, a dog may be able to tell you exactly what it wants, even combining concepts like ‘outside’ and ‘park’ or ‘beach.’ This could improve companionship and strengthen the bond between dogs and their owners.”
Data was collected via the FluentPet mobile app, where owners logged their dogs’ button presses in real time. The research team selected 152 dogs with over 200 logged button presses each to analyze patterns of use.
Advanced statistical methods, including computer simulations, were used to determine whether button combinations were random, imitative, or truly intentional. The results showed that multi-button presses occurred in patterns significantly different from random chance, supporting the idea of deliberate communication.
The researchers also compared dogs’ button presses to those of their owners and found that dogs were not simply imitating human behavior. For instance, buttons like “I love you” were far less frequently pressed by dogs than by their people.
While the study provides evidence of intentional two-button combinations, the researchers aim to go further. Future investigations will explore whether dogs can use buttons to refer to the past or future—such as a missing toy—or combine buttons creatively to communicate concepts for which they lack specific words.
“We want to know if dogs can use these soundboards to express ideas beyond their immediate needs, like absent objects, past experiences, or future events,” Rossano said. “If they can, it would drastically change how we think about animal intelligence and communication.”
Rossano’s co-authors on the study are Amalia P. M. Bastos, now at Johns Hopkins University; Zachary N. Houghton, now at UC Davis; and Lucas Naranjo with CleverPet, Inc.
Funding: Bastos’ work on the study was supported in part by Johns Hopkins’ Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
While Bastos and Houghton have previously served as consultants to CleverPet, and Naranjo currently works for the company, which manufactures the FluentPet mobile app and soundboard devices, the research design and analysis were conducted independently.
About this animal communication research news
Author: Inga Kiderra
Source: UCSD
Contact: Inga Kiderra – UCSD
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Soundboard-trained dogs produce non-accidental, non-random and non-imitative two-button combinations” by Federico Rossano et al. Scientific Reports
Abstract
Soundboard-trained dogs produce non-accidental, non-random and non-imitative two-button combinations
Early studies attempting interspecies communication with great apes trained to use sign language and Augmented Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices were limited by methodological and technological constraints, as well as restrictive sample sizes.
Evidence for animals’ intentional production of symbols was met with considerable criticisms which could not be easily deflected with existing data.
More recently, thousands of pet dogs have been trained with AIC devices comprising soundboards of buttons that can be pressed to produce prerecorded human words or phrases.
However, the nature of pets’ button presses remains an open question: are presses deliberate, and potentially meaningful? Using a large dataset of button presses by family dogs and their owners, we investigate whether dogs’ button presses are (i) non-accidental, (ii) non-random, and (iii) not mere repetitions of their owners’ presses.
Our analyses reveal that, at the population level, soundboard use by dogs cannot be explained by random pressing, and that certain two-button concept combinations appear more often than expected by chance at the population level.
We also find that dogs’ presses are not perfectly predicted by their owners’, suggesting that dogs’ presses are not merely repetitions of human presses, therefore suggesting that dog soundboard use is deliberate.
