Dogs are renowned for their ability to learn from humans, but the precise factors that make such learning successful are not fully understood. In this seminal study, Péter Pongrácz and colleagues investigated how verbal communication affects a dog’s ability to learn through human demonstration. The researchers tested adult dogs in detour tasks where they had to find a route around an obstacle to reach a goal, such as food or a toy.
Three experimental conditions were compared: a silent human demonstration, a verbal demonstration involving continuous communication, and a control condition without demonstration. The findings were clear—dogs performed significantly better when verbal cues accompanied the demonstration. When humans spoke to the dogs during the task, the animals paid more attention and were more likely to replicate the demonstrated route successfully.
The study concluded that verbal attention is a key factor in social learning between humans and dogs. Unlike many other species, dogs have evolved to interpret human speech as part of social and communicative interaction. This suggests that human language not only captures dogs’ attention but also serves as a contextual signal that learning is relevant to them.
These results provide evidence that interspecific social learning in dogs depends on communicative context—that is, dogs are not merely imitating actions but are actively engaging in a shared communicative exchange. This aligns with other research showing that dogs are especially attuned to human vocal tones and attention cues, reflecting their deep coevolutionary bond with humans.
Source: Pongrácz, P., Miklósi, Á., Timár-Geng, K., & Csányi, V. (2004). Verbal attention getting as a key factor in social learning between dog (Canis familiaris) and human. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 118(4), 375–383. Published December 1, 2004.
