Science in the News Announces our new Website and our 2004 Lecture Schedule
We are pleased to announce the launch of our new website (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/sitn/) and lecture schedule for this Fall. Our new site features many exciting capacities, including descriptions of all of our programs, and archives of SITNFlashes and the 2003 seminars. The site will be continuously updated with new information and we hope that our site will become a portal through which our audience can connect with the seminar speakers to get answers to science questions. Check back often, as we'll be adding more information and new features throughout the Summer and Fall!
We are additionally pleased to announce the schedule and topic list for our 2004 lecture series, which can be found on our website. We have added some new exciting topics: "Infectious Diseases and Deadly Viruses", "Genes and Behavior", "Drug Design: From the Lab to You", and "Cancer and Personalized Medicine". Additionally, we will continue to feature some old favorites as well.
Can Dogs Learn Words?
Dog owners often boast about their beloved pets’ social and communicative abilities. However, language has been traditionally thought of as a process unique to humans. A recent study published in the journal Science has provided pet owners with one more example of the powerful language abilities a dog can possess.
This study introduces Rico, a 9 year-old border collier, who is touted as possessing a vocabulary of over 200 words. These words represent items that can be “fetched” such as stuffed animals and balls. Interestingly, Rico can accurately discriminate between these 200 items. Rico can even distinguish between tennis balls and baseballs even though both are types of balls. More impressive is Rico’s ability to learn a word after hearing it only once. The researchers suggest that this ability is akin to the capacity of “fast mapping” that young children possess. Fast mapping is the process of forming a quick and rough hypothesis concerning the meaning of a new word after only a single exposure. This process allows children to learn on average 10 new words each day starting at the age of 2. To test Rico’s ability to fast map, the researchers placed a new, foreign item among seven familiar items and asked Rico to fetch the new item, using a name Rico had never heard before. As predicted, Rico fetched the foreign item and thereafter attributed the new word with that new item, demonstrating that he could fast map.
Rico’s fast mapping ability surpasses the language abilities of chimpanzees, but falls short of the language capabilities of humans. Humans have a vocabulary that exceeds 60,000 words by the age of 18, far larger than Rico’s “fetchable item” vocabulary. Additionally (and obviously!), humans can speak while Rico cannot. Furthermore, Rico has thus far only been able to learn words in the context of playing fetch.
Skeptics of this study point out that Rico might not have the same depth of knowledge concerning a word as humans do. To a human, the spoken word “apple” refers to more than just a piece of fruit. It could be used to mean an actual apple or a picture of an apple, or “apple” could be used to request, point out, or note the presence and/or absence of an apple. To Rico, “apple” might just simply mean “fetch the apple.” Further experiments will have to be done to address the extent of Rico’s word knowledge. Nonetheless, the discovery that a dog has the capacity to fast map is a fascinating demonstration of “human-like” language abilities that other species possess.
