Science spotlight: When dogs learn by listening
Can dogs learn words just by listening in on our conversations? A recent study suggests that, for a small group of dogs, the answer may be yes.
A recent article in The Guardian highlights research showing that some dogs can learn the names of objects without being directly taught. Instead of repetition, cues, or formal training sessions, these dogs appeared to pick up new words simply by overhearing humans talk about them, in a way that loosely mirrors early language learning in children.
Can dogs learn words without being taught?
Researchers focused on a rare group of dogs known as gifted word learners. These dogs already had a demonstrated ability to learn the names of multiple objects.
In the study, dogs heard their guardians talk about toys while the dogs were present but not directly engaged. Later, when asked to retrieve specific items, many of the dogs correctly identified toys they had never been explicitly trained to recognize.
The key point is that learning appeared to happen passively, through observation and listening, rather than through deliberate teaching.
👉 You can read the full research paper here: Dogs with a large vocabulary of object labels learn new labels by overhearing like 1.5-year-old infants
What this means (and what it doesn’t)
This doesn’t mean most dogs are secretly building vocabularies while we chat in the kitchen. The dogs studied represent a very small subset with unusually strong word-learning abilities.
What it does suggest is that dogs are paying more attention than we sometimes assume. Research like this helps clarify when and how dogs can learn words, especially outside of formal training contexts. Dogs are not just responding to cues or tone, but also to patterns in our language, context, and behaviour.
It also reinforces the idea that learning is social. Dogs don’t just learn from us. They learn with us, by watching how we interact with the world.
Findings like this align with broader research on canine cognition and social learning, which we explore in more depth in our article on how dogs learn.
A useful takeaway
Even when you’re not actively training, your dog is still learning something.
Most of the time, it won’t be object names. It will be routines, emotional cues, expectations, and patterns. But occasionally, for a few exceptional dogs, it might be words too.
Tabitha Turton
Tabitha is the founder and trainer at Belle & Bark. With a deep passion for canine behaviour and humane training, she’s committed to making life better for both ends of the leash. Her writing blends science-backed insight with real-life experience to help dog guardians feel more confident, compassionate, and informed.
