Dog able to verbally communicate with people | Hacker News Reader

Dog able to verbally communicate with people

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36 pointsanw29 comments

https://www.hungerforwords.com/post/teaching-my-dog-to-talk-...

This is a fascinating summary of training process and accomplished results. Author is speech therapist for children and applies similar approach instead of rewarding dog for just pressing buttons. Most of comments here are too dismissive of methods and results.

People do not want to believe animals are sentient and can communicate. They often spend their whole lives ignoring the evidence plainly in front of their own eyes. Hell, they used to do this with other humans..

I would argue this training is not about teaching the dog to communicate, they already do that. This is teaching the dog to communicate in a way that is understandable and verifiable to people other than their owner.

My dog learned to cough to get my attention and then point to the thing he wanted, or give me a look he knew I would understand. Barking at me would often just get my frustration, but he was so excited when he found out that we could both make the same noise coughing. After that, he would only bark if he was mad. Communication, but not with repeatable, verifiable 'words'.

> Hell, they used to do this with other humans..

There are enough that still explicitly do and another set that uses things like Evo Psych, IQ testing, and renewed interest in Non-African human origin and arguments that humans aren't a single species (since species isn't an exact term to begin with) to imply the same.

First I have heard of that stuff. So that is like, a new type of racism? Kind of next-level racism.

It's basically scientific racism and was used to justify slavery for a while.

Communication is a lower bar than using language; there isn't doubt that animals communicate.

I genuinely wasn't trying to be dismissive, I was just looking for some other confirming (or disconfirming) evidence. There is a thing called the "Clever Hans Effect" (see other comment) which can mislead people to thinking that they are communicating with animals. I'm not suggesting that this is what is happening here, only that it could be a possibility. I would very much like for this to be actually what is happening as I'd love nothing more than to be able to communicate in a sophisticated way with my own dog! That would be brilliant. I appreciate that the owner is a speech therapist, so does she have any published, peer-reviewed material on what she has achieved? If this were to be repeatable, I can imagine a lot of people wanting to enrol their dogs into "communications school" so that they could replicate the behaviour.

From the "Clever Hans" Wiki article [0]:

"Using a substantial number of trials, Pfungst found that the horse could get the correct answer even if von Osten himself did not ask the questions, ruling out the possibility of fraud. However, the horse gave the right answer only when the questioner knew what the answer was and the horse could see the questioner. He observed that when von Osten knew the answers to the questions, Hans got 89 percent of the answers correct, but when von Osten did not know the answers to the questions, Hans answered only six percent of the questions correctly."

Still pretty amazing capabilities, actually indicating advanced communication skills.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

As far as im concerned the horse is effectively outsmarting people by finding easy and unanticipated ways to answer hard questions. If a human child did this it might be considered clever.

This dog and its button pushing communication system have come up a few times here on HN. It really does seem incredible. I trained my dog to ring a bell to go in and out of the back door whenever he wants, but this is on a whole other level. How do we know this isn’t just a sophisticated version of the “The Clever Hans Effect”? [1] I’d love to believe this is what it looks like, but my skeptical radar is tingling.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

So she gets attention when she touches the buttons and gets food when she pushes "eat".

I like the idea but I don't think you can conclude it's communication any more than a rat pressing a lever to get his brain stimulated was.

I've come across these videos on TikTok many times - Stella has a much larger apparent vocabulary than "I need attention" and "food". From memory, there's another video out there somewhere of her pressing "Stella" "want" "walk". Her owner says "But Stella, we just went for a walk." The dog's response is "Stella" "want" "walk" "again" <delay, looks at owner> "now".

Well it is communication (would be really bad if animals could not communicate, especially animals that hunt in a pack). But yeah that button pushing is the opposite of extending communication.

I feel like this is missing some context. E.g. the word “mad” seems complex; how has this been introduced and how do we know that this is what the dog is trying to communicate?

There’s context in the details about the video. Apparently the owner didn’t leave like normal and didn’t give the dog her customary treat on leaving.

I was referring to the context related to the learning process and word meaning, the description doesn't explain that.

The other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23767827 links to an article with more details. This is what I was missing.

This article is much more detailed, thanks!

Every Dog does that all the time..it's not special, he bark's or pushes me with the nose, i ask food? If he look's down with his eyes rolling to the left as if there is a virtual bowl i know he want's food, if its not food he goes to the door and pushes the door with the nose, if cuddles he presses his body against my leg. The only difference here is that this poor dog had to learn howto use color buttons because his (former?)-owner (probably) cannot interpret his face or gestures.

> use color buttons

Even though dogs are colourblind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But not colorblind as in b/w:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/200810...

They are dichromatic and thus can see color, only different than we do and somewhat limited.

Buttons were introduced one by one. Also, when they moved into another apartment, the dog was trying out various buttons to see what phrase is where. Seems like colors don't have a role here.

This dog has been trained to press the Eat button to get food. It has not been trained to form sentences?

It definitely has been trained to form sentences. Haven’t you watched the other videos? There are several instances of the dog refusing food unless its owner acknowledges what it has to say first.

Hmm, so what the dog wants to communicate is that she wants a food treat. Not exactly unexpected.

Reminds me of the famous Gary Larson's comic:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1d/b5/27/1db5279f8a07f1601bf7...

Well, a lot of us only show up for work because we want our money treat. :)

> so what the dog wants to communicate is that she wants a food treat.

More like "I want my usual food treat, I didn't get it today".

Have you ever been late to feed a cat its regular meal? You will hear about it.

What breed is that dog?

I'm wondering the same. Its size and shape suggests Border Collie but fur color + length says otherwise.

Edit: I just found it. Blue Healer and Catahoula mix.

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