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Description
18-month-old children can learn novel words by overhearing triadic interactions. Evidence of label learning from overheard speech in nonhuman species would suggest that the social-learning skills enabling this process may have also evolved in other species. Gifted Word Learner Dogs (GWLD) learn object labels by engaging in playful social interactions with their owners. We examined whether GWLD can also learn object labels by observing 3rd-party interactions, and how this compares to their typical learning context. In Exp. 1, 10 GWLD were exposed to two conditions. In the Overhearing Condition (OC), dogs observed two owners engaging in a triadic interaction with a toy. In the Addressed Condition (AC), one of the owners played with the dog with a new toy. In the tests conducted after each condition the dogs demonstrated they have learned the names of the toys by performing significantly above chance in both conditions (Wilcoxon tests: AC: W = 45, p = 0.004, OC: W=54, p=0.004), with no difference between conditions (Wilcoxon test; AC vs. OC: W=14, p=0.622), mirroring previous findings with 18-month-olds. In Exp. 2, we tested the ability of 8 GWLD to learn new object-label mappings when the two stimuli were presented in temporal discontinuity (first seeing the object and then hearing its label). Here too, he dogs performed above chance (Wilcoxon test: W=28, p=0.011). These findings imply that GWLD possess several social learning skills that are functionally similar to those employed by 18-month-olds and contribute to our understanding of how attention and motivation influence social learning.
