Over the holiday weekend, I chatted with my sister-in-law about a study her and her dog participate in on providing communication tools to canines. Maybe you saw this segment on CBS Sunday Morning or some other reporting on this work. The dogs are given buttons, each of which plays a recording of a spoken word. We know dogs have some capacity to understand spoken language, since they can be trained to respond to commands. The word buttons close the loop, allowing the dogs to use words as well. While the sophistication of the speech may be disappointing for anyone expecting the translator collars from Up, this setup actually requires more intelligence on the part of the dogs since they have to do the translating themselves–possibly with some deciphering by the humans as well. The idea that the dog can press a button that says “dinner” when he’s hungry or “toy” when he wants to play seems pretty straightforward. Combining “downstairs” and “broccoli” to request a vegetable-flavored treat kept downstairs instead of “upstairs broccoli” (florets kept upstairs) is more intriguing.
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