New Study Is First 'Necessary Step' Towards Human-Dog Communication

A new study suggests that dogs can respond effectively to cues from soundboards.

Plos One published “How Do Soundboard-trained Dogs Respond To Human Button Presses? An Investigation Into Word Comprehension” earlier this month. It involved two experiments and 59 dogs, all of whom were pre-trained to use soundboards.

Researchers visited dogs’ homes in person for experiment one, while the animals’ guardians conducted trials themselves under remote guidance for experiment two. The participating dogs responded appropriately to words like “play,” and “outside,” regardless of context.

Professor Federico Rossano led a team of University of California San Diego researchers for the project, which is notably the first empirical study from the world’s largest longitudinal project on button-trained domestic animals. Upcoming research projects will study dogs’ spontaneous use of soundboard buttons to further explore their cognitive abilities.

New study is a ‘necessary step’ in broader canine research

Photo shows a woman training a young husky using positive reinforcement with treats — Adobe Stock The new study confirms that human-dog communication via soundboards is possible

Sales of Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices such as push-button soundboards have increased in popularity recently, in part due to the social media fame of “talking dogs” such as Stella or Bunny and countless other video-makers.

While many people anecdotally report successful training and communication with their dogs, some skeptics have noted that filmed animals may be responding to inadvertent contextual cues from their gardens rather than sounds from the soundboard itself.

However, this new research suggests that dogs are indeed producing appropriate behaviors independently of both environmental cues and who is present to make the prompt.

In the study, Rossano writes that “Testing soundboard-trained dogs under controlled experimental conditions is a necessary step towards assessing this form of interspecies communication.” He recently featured on Netflix’s Inside the Mind of a Dog – narrated by actor and famous dog-lover Rob Lowe – which also delves into canine learning and behavior.