I just read this interesting article on NPR about how dogs do pay attention to the meaning of words.
“…the findings show something surprising: “That dogs are able to differentiate between meaningful and meaningless sound sequences.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/11/28/367092004/how-dogs-understand-what-we-say
This is a really interesting study, isn’t it? Thanks for posting the link, Michael. I always knew my dogs were listening. Sometimes they just pretend not to understand. 🙂
Great post! I did have one issue with the way they conducted this experiment though. The fact that a dog can recognize a word (by turning toward the speaker) that he has heard before doesn’t necessarily mean that he understands the meaning of the word. He might just know the way the word sounds and may understand that it is a familiar word without understanding the meaning behind it. That being said, if dogs are to understand what we want them to do when we tell them to perform various tricks, they must understand the meaning of our commands at some level.