Dog Cognition Project (TheyCanTalk)
We are working in collaboration with FluentPet to determine whether, and if so to what degree, non-humans are able to express themselves in language-like ways. Bunny, a famous dog who has been trained to communicate through a sound board, is one of the participants in a large scale study from FluentPet aimed at teaching domesticated animals to communicate with humans. In the past, these soundboard have typically been used for children with communicative difficulties, and similar tools have been used with non-human primates in the past. We are working both on the memory aspects and especially on the linguistic aspects (e.g. how they combine words to produce utterances, how quickly they learn new words, what kind of things they communicate about, etc.). The implications for this study are incredibly important not only for understanding the nature of human-canine relationships, but also in improving veterinary medicine.