some Rico correspondence

[Deanna in OR]

Malanie said

If we share certain language-related traits with dogs, it means that these foundation characters evolved a very, very long time ago and are not a derived character limited to humans and our extinct relatives.

This comment is really interesting to me, as the unspoken assumption that I had about language in dogs was very different.

 

My assumption has been that the ability of dogs to understand and respond to human speech (and associated body language) was related to how dogs and humans have worked together over the millenia that they have been together, NOT necessarily to some rudimentary language capability that was present in domestic dogs' ancestors (or our common ancestors).

 

While the time since humans and dogs have worked together would be considered short for random evolution of this capability (natural selection), independent of its presence in a common mammalian ancestor, humans have had an enormous, non-random hand in how domestic dogs have evolved--choosing for the various looks and capabilities we see in the many dog breeds, today. It seems that choosing those canine companions who best respond to our language would have "created" this capability in dogs, by selecting for it.

 

That's why it seemed odd to me that the point of studying Rico and dog language skills is only to understand the evolution of human language skills. But I can certainly understand how an anthropologist would look at it from this perspective, since humans are his area of interest by definition.

 

Deanna

[SoloRiver]

My assumption has been that the ability of dogs to understand and respond to human speech (and associated body language) was related to how dogs and humans have worked together over the millenia that they have been together, NOT necessarily to some rudimentary language capability that was present in domestic dogs' ancestors (or our common ancestors).

 

Behavioral studies comparing dogs and wolves demonstrate that dogs are better at understanding cues from humans. This is probably due to selection that has occurred since humans and dogs got together, purposeful or not.

 

But, this is not the same thing as language capability. A dog can understand what pointing means without having language. Not all communication is about language. Most non-human social animals get by just fine without language.

[PennyT]

Before Melanie reopened this thread, I sent a link to it to Paul Bloom. I

explained that I was not asking him to post but thought he might like to

have a look. He

wrote me back, said he read the entire thing, and thought interesting points

were made on both sides of the subject.

 

I wish I had waited to send him the link so that Denise's pictures had been

up. I wonder if the variety in the types of pictures of sheep could be dismissed as lots of icons.

 

Anyway, I have to concede Melanie's point about symbols. Dang. Drat.

Blast. I did read the longer version of the Peirce link Melanie sent. I have no idea if Peirce and Bloom mean exactly the same thing by the term "symbol." Still, it has to be reasonably close to the same thing.

 

Yeah, yeah, that's what symbols are all about. However, scientists, especially if they are also philosophers, love to stake out intellectual turf with definitional differences (I think it's a type of marking as well as intellectual endeavor.), so I am hesitant to say their meanings are precisely the same when I have not read enough of them to be certain.

 

Here are Dr. Bloom's comments:

 

1. The interesting issue isn't whether Border Collies are smart, or

whether they

are good at following commands, etc. It is -- for me at least, and

for the authors

of the Rico article -- whether they learn and understand words the

same way that

a chld does. And this is interesting because it bears on the issue of

whether human

word learning is the result of uniquely human mental capcities, or

whether it is the

result of capacities that exist in other species. This is a question

that can only be

resolved through careful research, so I'm not persuaded by people who

believe that

the answer is obviouisly yes (or obviously no for that matter).

Consider that chimps

are extremely smart animals (whatever that means!), they are our

closest evolutionary

relatives ... and yet there is a large body of evidence that they

have absolutely no ability

to learn langauge in any way similar that how a human child does it.

 

2. I agree that there are all sorts of circumstances where it matters

who is talking

to you -- you might respond to one person (e.g., husband) but not

another (e.g.,

construction worker). But, still, language learning requires learning

about symbols,

not just about speakers. When a child learns a word, he can later

understand it even

when it is used by a stranger. There is no such thing as a normally

developing 3-year-old

who can only understand his mother -- such a child would have a neurological

disorder. This is because humans naturally take words as symbols that

refer, not

person-specific commands. It is an open question whether non-humans

do the same.

 

3. If you end up posting again, you might refer people to:

http://www.yale.edu/langcoglab/

This is my lab webpage, and if you click on "publications", you can download

my

Rico article, along with other articles on language learning and other

topics.

 

*********************************************************************

But don't use the link he sent. It didn't work for me to get to the

publications. Use this one:

www.yale.edu/langcoglab/publications.htm

 

I read his precis for a recent book called HOW CHILDREN LEARN THE MEANINGS

OF WORDS at:

www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/32/bbs00000432-00

 

The adobe version on the Yale website has a rather peculiar typeface.

 

Here is a quote from that precis:

 

"In

HCLMW, I discuss three populations who do not learn words - non-human

primates, autistic children, and pre-linguistic children. I suggest that in

all of these cases, the problem in word learning lies in the failure to

appreciate the representational intentions of other people. For babies and

chimpanzees, this deficit is so extreme that it entirely precludes word

learning....

The assumption throughout HCLMW is that to know the meaning of a word is to

have:

 

i) a certain mental representation, or concept, that

 

ii) is associated with a certain form"

[Denise Wall]

Becca wrote:

 

"Actually, I love the picture - you're welcome to drop it by my house anytime.

 

It would go beautifully in my new kitchen, if the kitchen ever gets done.

 

That's a Texel, isn't it?"

 

I don't know. Ask Mick

 

Sorry, Becca but the picture is long gone. Both of them are, actually. I had to take them down. I think my husband threw it away and used the frame for something else. Maybe a real sheep picture for your new kitchen? I have one I'll give you if you'd like.

 

Penny wrote:

 

"I wish I had waited to send him the link so that Denise's pictures had been

up."

 

That's really nice of you to say since I basically barged in and posted something completely off topic for the thread. I've just had it in the back of my mind for awhile and this thread was the closest thing to these sorts of observations that I'd seen in awhile.

 

"I wonder if the variety in the types of pictures of sheep could be dismissed as lots of icons."

 

I'm not sure I know what you mean. While I don't have a "control" picture exactly like the sheep drawing one with, say, a duck in the middle instead, I will say he is very specific in what he fixates on. There are pictures all over my house and he only cared about the ones with sheep in them. In the first pic I posted, you can see pictures beside it of me jumping horses. Those did not interest him. In that first pic, he would even go so far as to stand facing the sheep's heads when he looked at it.

 

He's not the only dog of that breeding to do this sort of abstraction with sheep pictures and drawings. I was wondering if others had dogs that look for representations of live objects like that.

 

This has been an interesting thread. I haven't had much intelligent to offer but I've enjoyed the different points of view expressed.

 

Denise

[AK dog doc]

Denise, Finn goes bazonkers if I put on a herding video. The first time I did it (before he'd ever been taken to stock) he was immediately riveted, and both sniffed at and pawed the screen, then looked at each side of the TV to see if he could enter it that way. Since he couldn't, he ran around the room, grabbing each toy in turn (there are a rather embarrassing number). He'd shove it into my lap and then go get another one, til he ran out of toys. Then he'd stare, every muscle trembling, and whine til he could not stand it any longer, and then he'd run around looking for something on which to displace his excitement. I eventually had to turn off the video or put him outside because he was so worked up about it (crating, even covering the crate so he couldn't see, was not enough, nor was shutting him out of the room). Interestingly, when the little computer-animation came on (little symbols of sheep and dog, not very good renderings, which do not move realistically at ALL - the legs do not move, the entire picture just displaces jerkily to the side), he still reacted with excitement and intent interest, though not as much as for the "real" ones. He also responds to dogs or any other animal on TV, and at work has at least once stood on his hind legs to inspect the decorative wallpaper borders, which depict dogs and cats. I have not tried him on photos of sheep. He does carefully inspect photos of himself, however, though I'm not sure if that's because I say, "Look, Finn, aren't you hadsome?" so he's checking out the object to see what I like about it, or if he recognisses that that is an image of a dog (I won't go so far as to suggest that even a BC would recognise that that is a picture of a SPECIFIC dog, much less itself!)

 

Anyway, I'm not at all surprised that Mick recognises sheep in pictures. But I might have been if I hadn't seen Finn's antics with video.

[Spike's Bitch]

^Even more off-topic:

Spike did something similar with a herding video, but lost interest after realising there was no way he could get in the little box and the sheep weren't behind it. (Spike has never seen a real sheep as far as I know - he might have tried harder if he had).

 

Max, my foster GSP, is fascinated by mirrors and will gaze at himself for hours. His new mum put a picture of him on her screensaver and now he stares at that too.

 

Liz n' Spike xxx

[Tuck's BCBuddy]

Hmm, funny thing is, I had always herd (oops, a little Freudian slip) that dogs could not see television. Something about the 2-D imagery or some hogwash. I sometimes responded with, "other than the dogs themselves, how the hell can they tell the dog cannot see television". Anyway, based on some of the recent posts, sounds like I almost bought into a complete farce, or maybe just an old wives tale. Always had some doubts, that I think have just been substantiated.

[Denise Wall]

Tuck'sBCBuddy,

 

Most dogs can't see TV. I'm almost embarrassed to admit Mellissa and I have researched this a bit. Only somewhere around one in 100 can see TV. Simplified, the rate of flashes per second on the TV screen is undetectable by most dogs' eyes. It's probably a mutation that allows some dogs to see TV. Many people think their dog is seeing TV when in reality they're responding to the sounds they hear.

 

Mick is the only dog I've had who could see TV. Neither parent (who I also owned) could. However, they both probably carried the "TV viewing" mutation, which is likely autosomal recessive.

 

Some of the other dogs similarly bred can also see TV. Interestingly, it is only the TV viewing ones that have been reported to do the sheep picture recognition. It could be that the ability to see TV makes them more likely to look for sheep on the walls, etc.

 

Denise

[Joan]

Originally posted by C Denise Wall:

He's not the only dog of that breeding to do this sort of abstraction with sheep pictures and drawings. I was wondering if others had dogs that look for representations of live objects like that.

Hi, Denise.

 

I'm not sure this is the same thing, but...

 

I think you know that Rip likes to play with cats, and thanks to Tom Lacy and Jeff Hoffman , Rip knows the word "kitty." My vet has a photo of a cat on the wall in her very large exam room. I said "kitty," and Rip started looking. No kitty on the floor. Sometimes they jump up on things, so... He found the kitty and fixated on it, much like Mick does with sheep. Whenever we go in that office, he finds the kitty, without being asked, even if they've put the photo on another wall. One day it wasn't in there, and he was looking all over for the kitty. They retrieved it from another room for him.

 

Rip's eyes are going, but I'll have to try him on a few of your sheep photos.

 

It was fascinating to watch Mick with the photos at your house!

[cgt]

Simplified, the rate of flashes per second on the TV screen is undetectable by most dogs' eyes.

Denise: Wow. Interesting. Could you elaborate, please? (How does one experimentally come to this conclusion? What is the key physiological difference in the eyes/nervous system/brain of dogs compared to, say, humans? etc.) Or point me toward the literature.

 

Thanks!

 

charlie torre

[Denise Wall]

Charlie,

 

I'll need a little time to find that info here. It's been years since we looked into it. I'll go through my files as soon as I get a chance.

[cgt]

No hurry, Denise!

 

I just need to know for sure so I can quit trying to train my dogs by making them watch videos.

 

charlie

[Tuck's BCBuddy]

Denise,

Ahh, so then, for the large majority of dogs, what I had been told was true. Someone explained it to me that they couldn't see in the whole 2D thing with the television, wherein caused my doubts, however your explanation about the flashes per second makes a hell of a lot more sense. Thanks for posting that, and, as Charlie, I too will be interested in reading up further on this. Also interesting, is that a few dogs can actually see television, and that it is genetic in nature. I know things like ability to roll one's tongue is genetic, and maybe it shouldn't have, but this one surprised me.

 

Only question I would have, though, is why you would be almost embarrassed to admit you researched this? To me, it's interesting stuff.

[juliepoudrier]

Okay, this is also off topic but I had a discussion with my vet the other day about what and how dogs see. The question arose because I take my dogs to the beach on my lunch hour and have them fetch balls in the ocean so they get swimming exercise. The question I posed was what exactly is the dog focusing on when s/he goes out after a ball? The actual shape of the ball floating in the water? The contrast between ball and surroundings? I asked this because I noted that with some of my dogs, if they did not actually see the ball splash into the water then they apparently did not know it was there and so wouldn't swim after it. But another of my dogs will take my word for it that a ball is out there and will start swimming. You can watch her actively looking for the ball and can tell when she has spied it (much like I can tell when I've asked her to look for sheep and she has spied them). So what really are the dogs seeing? I would have thought that they were watching the motion of the ball, but the dog who will look for a ball has nothing to go on but me telling her there's a ball out there somewhere. Could she also be using her sense of smell? Denise, do you have any enlightenment for me?

 

On the TV watching note, only one of my seven dogs shows any interest in TV watching, and he does really appear to be watching motion on the TV,not just responding to sound.

 

All very interesting....

 

J.

[sea4th]

Here's an article that was in the local newspaper Dec. of last year:

 

 

Medina - As soon as visitors to Foote's Glass Co. walk through the door, they get a tail-wagging invitation from Jake to sit down with him for yet another video-screening of the 1995 movie "Babe."

 

He'll nudge them to the TV, imploring with those big brown eyes, to get them to watch his favorite flick about a pig that acts like a sheep-herding dog.

 

"And why not? It's a classic - full of animals, including border collies just like me. The first time I saw it, I barked, I whined. It became a part of me."

 

Jake destroyed a previous VCR by jumping up on his hind legs to repeatedly jam the tape in and mash the controls.

 

"I was just trying to hit the paws' button so I could visit the little puppies room."

 

Jake can't quite reach the second VCR now. So he sits, watching and waiting for the parts he likes best, then leaps to bestow a friendly lick on Babe the pig, or furiously barks and scratches at the screen whenever the canine villain appears.

 

"Hey, it's a bad dog. BAD dog."

 

Jim and Anita Foote got Jake three years ago to be a play partner for their other border collie, Mac, who strictly prefers more traditional forms of dog entertainment, like chasing balls.

 

But Jake became a boob-tube babe as soon as he joined the Foote household, initially whetting his video appetite by leaping at the screen to try to snag fly balls falling across the screen in televised Tribe games.

 

"Well SOMEBODY had to catch em. Those little guys on TV certainly couldn't."

 

It wasn't long before Jake developed a decided preference for certain TV fare, such as The Animal Channel, Pet Star Search and any commercial with four-legged animals, especially dogs, in it. (Cartoons don't count.) He soon learned how to push the power button on with his nose, and lick the control buttons to channel-surf to his favorite programs.

 

It got to the point where the Footes had to take the buttons off the TV so they could get some sleep when Jake decided to do some midnight TV viewing. "He's still looking for those buttons," Jim Foote said. "If we ever lose the remote, we're in trouble."

 

"There's a remote?"

 

When his wife started bringing Jake with her to the glass shop where she works, she brought along an assortment of canine-appropriate tapes, including "Lassie," "Snow Dogs" and "The Incredible Journey." Sometimes he almost seems to be trying to speak back to the screen.

 

"When the dogs' mouths move, Jake's mouth moves," she said. "If he ever starts talking, I'm outta here."

 

She also noted that Jake seems to get the most excited when there's some kind of commotion on screen; as if he's trying to calm the situation, following some kind of herding instinct.

 

"Well, duh. BORDER COLLIE, remember?"

 

As word of Jake's passion spread, visitors started coming to the shop just to see the dog. Some asked if the Footes had trained Jake to watch TV.

 

Anita Foote, thinking of all the screen-scratched sets at home, is floored by the suggestion. "Heavens, no! Why would I want to teach him that? I can't afford the TVs," she said.

 

In fact, she worries about Jake. None of her six children was ever so plugged in to the tube. "I think he's a little obsessive," she said. "I thought about taking the TV out of here, but I'd have so many people disappointed who come in just to see Jake."

 

"Shhhhh! We're getting to the good part, where the bad dog attacks the sheep!"

 

He knows when the good parts are coming, having viewed "Babe" several times nearly every day in the past year. He'll often glance over to his screening guests, just to make sure they're enjoying it, too. Simply reciting lines from the movie will set him off in a barking fit of recognition.

 

Anita Foote has a backup videotape of "Babe," just in case this one breaks or wears out. But she hasn't found a DVD version of the flick yet, and wonders what'll happen if VCRs ever go the way of 8-track tape players.

 

All this, for the love of a dog and his TV.

 

"I know it sounds nuts," Anita Foote said. "Sometimes I'm embarrassed to tell people, for fear they'll think, 'This lady has lost her mind.' "

 

"Hey, are you watching or yakking? And see if you can rustle up some more of that kibble 'n' popcorn, OK?"

[AK dog doc]

Finn will watch the TV animals even with the sound off. He doesn't appear to be interested in TV people or cars or anyhing else - just the animals. The sound will certainly alert him to an amimal being there, but even if I mute, he will often notice an animal on the screen and jump up to investigate. (We had to mute a lot this winter because Taco Bell did a commercial with Dee Dee Jonrowe - one of the local mushing celebs - going through the drive-through with her team. Naturally the huskies were barking and howling. Finn was galvanized. Even from a sound sleep, he'd hear that and leap to his feet and race to the TV to stare at Those Dogs. I can't decide if he hated that commercial or loved it, but *I* certainly came to hate it!)

[Eileen Stein]

I haven't posted much on this interesting thread, because I seem to be having a lot of trouble understanding much of what others are saying, and a lot of trouble making myself understood. Ironic, given the topic. I suppose it might have helped if I'd read the Kaminski article instead of just newspaper accounts of it, but when Science online wouldn't let me read it for free I didn't follow up. I appreciate Dr. Bloom providing a URL for his commentary on it.

 

Anyway, here are some random thoughts:

 

Irrelevancies. I fully understand that all this is about language, not intelligence, and that no value judgments are involved. Really, yes, totally, I do.

 

Multiple Speakers. Bloom wrote to Penny:

 

"I agree that there are all sorts of circumstances where it matters who is talking to you -- you might respond to one person (e.g., husband) but not another (e.g., construction worker). But, still, language learning requires learning about symbols, not just about speakers. When a child learns a word, he can later understand it even when it is used by a stranger."

 

Yes, I understand and agree with this. My concern was with the practicalities of our ascertaining whether the dog understands the word from different speakers. I understood Bloom to be inferring that if Rico did not perform as well at fetching objects when commanded by a stranger, that would be some evidence that he didn't really understand the word used. I disagree with that -- IMO it would be no evidence either way, because there are other equally plausible explanations for why he might not perform as well.

 

I would be interested to know what Bloom would consider acceptable proof that the dog understood the word. Would it be good enough if the dog responded to other members of his family, or to a trainer, or to a recent acquaintance who had established a working relationship with him, or would it have to be a person he was hearing speak for the first time? The dog might perform for a total stranger--I have had dogs who reacted to familiar words spoken by a stranger (see "crab," below), and of course we have the example of sheepdogs understanding and executing known commands for a person they've just met--but if he didn't, I don't see why the presumption should be that he didn't because he didn't understand the word.

 

Commands. Bloom said "The interesting issue isn't whether Border Collies are smart, or whether they are good at following commands, etc." and elsewhere he made a couple of other disparaging-sounding remarks about commands. I agree that this isn't about whether border collies are smart, but I don't understand why their ability to follow commands doesn't bear on their understanding of words. Commands are given in words or word equivalents (such as the whistle commands I referred to in an earlier post -- there are human languages that include whistle vocabularies, though English does not), and I don't understand why a demonstration of the dog's understanding which takes the form of responding to commands should not be probative of an understanding of words.

 

Melanie, when you and Bloom speak of words as symbols (which I agree they necessarily are in language), is it only nouns you're talking about? Cannot the words (or whistle) "run wider" be a symbol for the concept "run wider"?

 

Assumptions. In his article, Bloom says:

 

"Children . . . can learn words from overheard speech, even if nobody is trying to teach them. Rico, in contrast, learns only through a specific fetching game."

 

If Bloom really means what he says here, he is making an assumption, and it is almost certainly a false assumption. Dogs do learn words from overheard speech when no one is trying to teach them, and I assume Rico is no exception. My first border collie, for example, learned the word "crab" from overheard speech, and would run down to the dock where our crab traps were whenever someone (including visitors) said the word, in whatever context. We mostly said the word either when we were going to the dock to get the crabs out of the traps, or when we were dining on them. She never associated the word with the food we were eating--if we said crab while eating crabs, she would run down to the dock--so in that sense she didn't have a full appreciation that the scuttling creature could become a crabcake--but then neither would a young child. I had certainly never tried to teach her the word, and obviously she never fetched the crabs, although I believe that if I had told her to "get a crab" she would have tried to do so. Admittedly, she was an extraordinarily intelligent and verbal dog. (The two are not the same, but they're not unrelated either -- her intense interest in figuring out things of all kinds was a sign of her intelligence, and I'm sure that led her to focus on words and make associations with them.) But I'm sure most of us have seen examples of dogs learning words without anyone's trying to teach them, and quite apart from any fetch game.

 

But maybe Bloom doesn't mean what he's saying. Maybe "Rico . . . learns only through a specific fetching game" is Bloom's way of saying "In this particular study, Rico has only demonstrated learning through a specific fetching game." Well, yes, that's true. But it doesn't justify saying that's the only way he learns. Again, we come back to the question of how we can demonstrate that a dog has learned a word, given that the dog can't very well use it in a sentence. You pretty much have to give him some command related to the object, don't you?

 

Bloom ended his article with a series of questions: Can Rico learn a new word by being shown an object and hearing a person name it? (Surely any dog owner knows that, unless Rico is a very unusual dog, the answer is yes.) Can he learn a word for something other than a small fetchable object? (Ditto) Can he display knowledge of a word in some way other than fetching? (Ditto) Can Rico follow an instruction not to fetch an item? (I don't know. Interesting question. But if he couldn't, would it mean he didn't understand the word, or would it only mean he didn't understand the syntax?)

 

He then ends the article by saying, "ntil we have answers to these sorts of questions, it is too early to give up on the view that babies learn words and dogs do not." Which probably encapsulates my problem with his position. Why, if it's an open question whether dogs understand words, has he formed a view that they don't? A view that he is unwilling to "give up on"?

 

Vicki Hearne has always set my teeth on edge, but I'm feeling a real affinity with her right now.

 

Context. Just a word on this, because this post is already too long. Several people have said dogs only learn words in a specific context. That has not been my experience. Sometimes they do, it's true, but often they show a remarkable ability to generalize. Someone said that a dog would just stand there bewildered if you said "Come by" to him in your living room. Well, yes, sure he would. But that's because "come by" only has meaning in relation to something. If you said "go around that" to me in my living room, I'd look bewildered too. Go around what? But although I wouldn't train that way myself, I have no trouble believing that dogs have generalized the command "come by" from lawn chairs in a back yard to sheep in a pasture.

 

I was once at a dog trial where, as "intermission" entertainment, Tommy Wilson was asked to go onto the field with three of his dogs and try to round up a group of people wearing fake hog noses. (Don't ask.) It was supposed to be funny, but it was actually very, very interesting. One of the dogs just stood there and looked bewildered when Tommy gave the command (which was probably "come by," actually). Another dog began running on a long outrun, and when he got to the far fence, tried to find a way through it, apparently assuming there was livestock too far away for him to see them. But the third dog went out around the "Hogettes" and tried to wear them to Tommy.

 

Purely for amusement, and definitely not as argument, I'll end with a quote from Frans Bengtsson's delightful book The Long Ships, a novel about Vikings' adventures and the Viking worldview. Having traveled to Kiev, the Vikings watch as their local guides make a portage, using oxen to drag their boat:

 

"The ox-drivers spoke to their beasts the whole time, and sometimes sang to them, so that they dragged willingly, but when Orm's men spoke to them, using the words which they used to address oxen at home, they received no response, because these oxen could not understand what they were saying. This surprised the men greatly; it showed, they said, that oxen were far wiser beasts than they had hitherto supposed, for here was evidence that they possessed a characteristic in common with men, namely, that they could not understand the speech of foreigners."

[Eileen Stein]

Denise, my Gyp avidly watches trial tapes on TV, and without doubt she is seeing what she's watching, because if the sheep are moving to her right she will move to her right, and vice versa.

[G_Davis]

All very interesting about the TV or not TV. Most dogs I have had can have their attention drawn to the television initially by some sounds, then seem to see it as they watch for a bit then go closer to investigate. But when no smell confirms anything they ignore it and never bother with it again. It's just a bothersome noisebox.

[urge to herd]

I've been following this thread avidly - can't grasp some of the science but it's so darn interesting.

 

And now I have to relate an out of context moment w/Shoshone. She's got a thing for a yellow lab named Max, he's the greatest thing in the world as far as she's concerned. We see him most mornings at the park, and she will drop her ball and charge off after him when I say - Shonie, there goes Max - tail wagging furiously.

 

I was telling Hubby how devoted she is one evening, she was lying on the couch sound asleep, and I said very quietly, almost whispering, - Shonie, Max is here - she was awake and off the couch and looking around with her tail going like a banner in a hurricane! I swear she looked disappointed when she couldn't find him.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post all of this discussion and share all this knowledge with us!

 

Ruth n the Border Trio

[PennyT]

Hi, Denise. On icons: follow the link in Melanie's earlier post and read the long version.

 

My husband has been reading some of the posts on dogs watching videos. He says, "Tell people to turn the sound off and see what happens."

 

Penny

[sea4th]

They--the dogs---would only try to turn it up again.

 

Vicki

[Bill Fosher]

Charlie,

 

If you stopped trying to teach your dogs how to see the TV, maybe Jenn wouldn't be able to read the computer monitor and she'd stop orderling loads of 11,000 lambs for fall delivery every week.

[SoloRiver]

My concern was with the practicalities of our ascertaining whether the dog understands the word from different speakers. I understood Bloom to be inferring that if Rico did not perform as well at fetching objects when commanded by a stranger, that would be some evidence that he didn't really understand the word used. I disagree with that -- IMO it would be no evidence either way, because there are other equally plausible explanations for why he might not perform as well.

 

Right, but from a scientific perspective what that means is that the null hypothesis cannot be refuted. An experiment addressing this point would have to control for the other plausible explanations.

 

I would be interested to know what Bloom would consider acceptable proof that the dog understood the word. Would it be good enough if the dog responded to other members of his family, or to a trainer, or to a recent acquaintance who had established a working relationship with him, or would it have to be a person he was hearing speak for the first time?

 

I'm not Bloom, and I'm not a linguist either, but I don't think these performances would constitute evidence that a dog understood a word in the same sense that humans understand words. Only that dogs can respond to multiple speakers.

 

Commands. Bloom said "The interesting issue isn't whether Border Collies are smart, or whether they are good at following commands, etc." and elsewhere he made a couple of other disparaging-sounding remarks about commands. I agree that this isn't about whether border collies are smart, but I don't understand why their ability to follow commands doesn't bear on their understanding of words.

 

Because understanding of symbols is not required to follow commands. I think commands are usually indexical. The question is always whether or not dogs have true language capabilities. A dog learns to associate the words "come bye" with a left flank, and a whistle for "run wider" with a wider flank, but a dog will never understand the sentence, "next time you come bye, run a little bit wider" or "that last flank, on the come bye, you were not wide enough." We may be able to sort of get these messages across (otherwise we could not train dogs) but it isn't the same thing as being able to discuss these actions in an abstract sense. I don't know if I'm making any sense here.

 

Melanie, when you and Bloom speak of words as symbols (which I agree they necessarily are in language), is it only nouns you're talking about? Cannot the words (or whistle) "run wider" be a symbol for the concept "run wider"?

 

They don't have to be nouns. For us, the whistle can be a symbol for the concept of running wider. But does the dog understand "running wider" as a concept, or does he just learn to perform the action that has become associated with the whistle? I don't know, but I lean toward the latter explanation.

 

If Bloom really means what he says here, he is making an assumption, and it is almost certainly a false assumption. Dogs do learn words from overheard speech when no one is trying to teach them, and I assume Rico is no exception.

 

[...]

 

But maybe Bloom doesn't mean what he's saying. Maybe "Rico . . . learns only through a specific fetching game" is Bloom's way of saying "In this particular study, Rico has only demonstrated learning through a specific fetching game."

 

I think that's what he meant. Now, I do think you're right that if linguists knew more about dogs than they do, they could formulate more interesting studies and hypotheses. But they cannot simply accept the general wisdom about dogs -- as we all know, the "general wisdom" is often untrue (otherwise there wouldn't be so many hopeless pet owners out there). They also have to formulate studies such that they will be acceptable and robust enough to be presented to the rest of the linguistic community. It isn't enough to say, "Any dog owner knows that dogs can learn words by accident." It has to be demonstrated in a controlled context.

 

He then ends the article by saying, "ntil we have answers to these sorts of questions, it is too early to give up on the view that babies learn words and dogs do not." Which probably encapsulates my problem with his position. Why, if it's an open question whether dogs understand words, has he formed a view that they don't? A view that he is unwilling to "give up on"?

 

Because the interesting hypothesis is that dogs learn words the same way babies do. To support that hypothesis, we have to refute the null hypothesis. So far, the evidence is not such that we can refute the null hypothesis. It's just science. The method structures the way you conceptualize problems. An open question is open because there are a number of possible explanations. Each explanation is a hypothesis that must be refuted. The currently widespread hypothesis is that dogs don't have true language capabilities. So the onus is on the "dogs do too have language" people to refute this hypothesis, not the other way around. Kind of like if I were a Flat Earther it would be up to me to convince everyone else the earth was flat, not for the rest of the scientific community to convince me that it's round.

 

Context. Just a word on this, because this post is already too long. Several people have said dogs only learn words in a specific context. That has not been my experience. Sometimes they do, it's true, but often they show a remarkable ability to generalize. Someone said that a dog would just stand there bewildered if you said "Come by" to him in your living room. Well, yes, sure he would. But that's because "come by" only has meaning in relation to something.

 

Right. To a dog. But not to a person. I can ask you, "is 'come bye' clockwise or counterclockwise?" I can say, "Fly's come bye side is not as natural as her away side." I think dogs probably cannot think this way. To a dog, "come bye" means "flank left around the sheep." No more, no less. If you say "come bye," your dog will look for sheep and be confused if there are none.

[cgt]

Bill:

 

Too true. But I just heard that lamb prices at the local auction are up. I got a kid in college. Kinda makes me wonder if I could stash 11,000 sheep in my back yard.

 

charlie