The videos are all over social media: Dogs (and some cats) pushing soundboard buttons to “talk” to their owners. The uptick in the use of these devices among pet owners has produced some entertaining and seemingly impressive interactions. But are these animals truly communicating, or just responding to cues from their owners?
Now, a new study shows that dogs trained with soundboard buttons can understand specific words and respond appropriately. It’s the first step in a large, ongoing investigation into interspecies communication.
Talking to the Animals
Federico Rossano was skeptical when he was first approached by the CEO of a company that makes soundboard buttons. Rossano is a cognitive scientist and head of the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California, San Diego. The CEO was interested in systemically studying how animals use soundboard buttons. Rossano wasn’t familiar with the viral videos of soundboard-using pets, but he was intrigued by the possibility of a large pool of potential participants. The more he looked into the phenomenon, the more curious he became.
“If you study linguistics or animal communication, then you should at least wonder what is going on with these animals,” says Rossano. “You can dismiss it as ‘just a social media thing,’ or you can ask questions and see what happens, because we might be missing out on something that can provide insight into these animals’ abilities.”
With a background in psycholinguistics and comparative psychology, Rossano was familiar with the troubled history of studies on animal language. In the 1960s and 70s, researchers attempted to teach sign language to great apes, but those studies faced criticism for their training methods, testing procedures, and claims about apes’ ability to use signs flexibly.
The original animal language studies focused on great apes because they are so closely related to humans. But, as Rossano points out, these animals have zero desire to interact with us. Dogs, on the other hand, have been shaped by domestication to care about humans. They are comfortable in human environments. They might be more motivated than apes to try to communicate with us.
However, studying owner-trained soundboard-using pets raises another issue: the reliability of citizen science data. Rossano would have to clearly demonstrate that the data from these animals is not cued, misreported, or cherry-picked by their owners, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Word Comprehension
For the new study, Rossano and colleagues carried out two complementary experiments investigating dogs’ ability to recognize and respond appropriately to food-, play-, and outside-related words on their soundboards. One study was conducted by researchers in the dogs’ own homes, and the other by citizen scientists (dog owners) following the same procedure. In addition, the team asked whether dogs’ responses depended on the identity of the person pressing the button (an unfamiliar person or the dog’s owner) and the mode of presentation (spoken or produced by pressing a button).
The researchers found that dogs responded with appropriate behaviors to both play-related and outside-related words, regardless of who produced them and the mode in which they were produced. It shows that, at the least, dogs can learn an association between these words or buttons and their outcomes in the world, even in the absence of other environmental cues related to the words.
“The results are not surprising to anybody who has a dog or knows animal cognition,” says Rossano. “But this study was a necessary step to address the criticism that many people have, which is that soundboard-using dogs may simply be following behavioral cues from their owners without understanding what they are asking for.”
Critically, the researchers also found no difference in dogs’ behaviors between the two experiments. This suggests that results from the citizen science version of the study were comparable to those obtained by researchers during visits to owners’ homes.
Bigger Questions
Now that Rossano and colleagues have established that soundboard-trained dogs can and do comprehend words, the team can investigate more interesting questions. They have thousands of pet owners from around the world involved in their ongoing study of soundboard communication. Some of these owners are using soundboards that automatically log every button press. A smaller number have agreed to 24/7 video recordings of their soundboards to capture everything that goes on before, during, and after the dog presses a button.
One focus of future research is dogs’ production of words using soundboards, and if they can spontaneously produce appropriate button presses in experimental situations.
“We’re interested to see if, through their use of soundboard buttons, we can get a little window into these animals’ minds—what they care about, what they want, how they represent things,” says Rossano. “And, of course, we’re interested in investigating if they really use these devices to communicate.”
The researchers have more studies in the pipeline, including running similar experiments with soundboard-trained cats. “Clearly, these animals have minds,” says Rossano. “They pay attention to your behavior. They engage with you and care about you.
“It’s possible that soundboard devices may be a way to get a little peek into what’s going on in their minds.”
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