In Dog Ears

Sure, maybe your dog really is giving you the cold shoulder … taking a cue from a teenager or a cat, perhaps.

But instead of ignoring you when you call his name, is your canine companion just too distracted by general clatter to notice? It’s a question that Rochelle Newman, professor and chair of the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, aims to answer with an ongoing study of how background noise affects dogs’ understanding of human language.

“There’s a practical side to this that’s important for activities that involve working with service dogs or search-and-rescue dogs,” she says. “There’s also the aspect of what this could tell us about language, and how much of it is built on auditory abilities that aren’t just unique to humans.”

The experiment, which includes University of Maryland Police Department dogs, measures how long dogs pay attention to a voice calling their names amid the babble of several other voices—similar to what one might hear in a busy café. It’s conducted with dogs and owners or handlers sitting in a testing room outfitted with speakers, and is designed to be fun for both.

Newman and her students also run babies through the test, allowing them to compare how different species process language and cope with distractions.

“Infants, like dogs, don’t have a rich vocabulary or well-developed understanding of how the language works, but maybe they have a generalized understanding of language that other species don’t,” she says. “Or we may find out that listening in noise isn’t about language ability, but the ability to pay attention—something still developing in infants.”

Future tests will hone in on how different noise levels and kinds of cacophony, from traffic to industrial noise, affect understanding, she says. For now, Newman is looking for more service dogs and pets to test. Breed and age aren’t important, but they need to be old enough to know and respond to their names. To participate, email ldev@umd.edu.