Dogs may be taught to communicate by pressing buttons: study

A new study suggests dogs can learn to express themselves by pressing buttons to create two or more word combinations.

Researchers have been following several thousand dogs since 2022 whose button presses are logged through an app designed by Fluent Pet, which makes soundboards, and they then selected 152 dogs who were pressing two or more buttons in a sequence and found they frequently selected their own name, followed by "want" and then topics like "food" or "outside," reported the Washington Post.

“If we know that they are using the buttons intentionally, they can use them in ways that seem smart, like a young child, “said Federico Rossano, an associate professor of cognitive science at the University of California at San Diego. “This should lead owners to a renewed appreciation of the intelligence of their pets and help them provide for their dogs.”

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The data was self-reported by dog owners, but those selected for the multi-word combination study were not informed about it to avoid bias, and the researchers conducted computer simulations on probability to determine whether the combinations were random.

“This is how we know that most dogs in this pool were doing multi-button combinations in nonrandom ways,” Rossano said. “Note that nonrandomness can be caused by many things, including imitating the training they received, though the first analysis comparing button presses by owner and their dogs suggests that this is unlikely to be the main explanation.”

However, he said some of the dogs were pressing the buttons at random, which he said bolstered the credibility of their findings.

"If the data lined up as if they were all extremely systematic," Rossano said, "it would seem very hard to believe."

"The dogs understand the meaning of the more frequently used words on these soundboards and suggest that dogs are capable of using these soundboards to communicate with humans about their needs and wants,” Rossano added. “It further raises the possibility that they might be communicating the way a 2-year-old human might, which is more sophisticated than previously believed.”

Amritha Mallikarjun, a researcher at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center who was not involved in the study, said the dogs' first button press might have been random but led to more button presses through reinforcement.

“Dogs trained on buttons will often like to try things and will take a guess at what we want by performing a random behavior,” she said. “The button-trained dog presses ‘want outside’ one time just to try it. There is no real knowledge of what the concept of the verb ‘want’ is. ‘Outside’ usually means the dog’s person lets you in the backyard, and sometimes you hear your owner press ‘want food,’ so the dog associates the ‘want’ button with good things.”