We’ve always had dogs around my house, and right now we have two miniature English bulldogs named Boo and Harper (not the ones pictured those are Google dogs). And last summer I became obsessed with the idea that they could probably speak English since they had been living in our house for 4 years listening to us talk to each other and talk to them. If I lived in Spain for this long, I probably would be able to pick up Spanish, or at least understand by their gestures and tone of voice what they could be saying. If someone around the house happened to call Boo fat, she always seemed to look up at them really sadly then walk away. While I took this idea to an extreme (“Harper, blink twice if you understand English!!”) there has been a recent study that shows dogs might understand us more than we expect.

The University of Sussex’s School of Pyschology did a study on dogs to see how their brains would respond to humans calling their names. They would play the sounds (of familiar commands or “exaggerated vocal cues”) on both sides of the dog at an equal volume. Experiments showing dog-dog relationships had used this tactic before to see how the dog reacts. The ear correlates with the opposite side’s hemisphere, so if the dog responded more strongly to the left ear, something may be going on in the right hemisphere of the brain.

The study did find that familiar commands showed a response from the left hemisphere and the vocal cues had a response from the right (indicated by if the dog instinctively turned in that direction). The dog uses both sides of its brain when interacting with its owner, which is similar to how the human brain operates. In humans, the left brain deals with language, processing information, and memory; the right hemisphere deals with interpreting emotions and tones as well as recognizing visuals (www.livescience.com). While dogs probably cannot understand English or the words we are saying, they know “”not only to who we are and how we say things, but also to what we say.”

I think this study may be fairly accurate. The hypothesis for reverse causation would be to say that the hemispheres of the brain affect the sounds that are heard, which I don’t think is accurate based on first principles (even if the first event happens milliseconds before the reaction). However, I couldn’t tell if it was the owner’s voice or the voice of the researchers the dog had to respond to. In terms of memory this wouldn’t be a problem, but if it was the owner’s voice that caused the right hemisphere reaction, that could be a possible third variable (the relationship between the owner and his or her own dog). Regardless, maybe I’m biased but I think this study seems sound.