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The study finds that cats are better at linking words than babies

2024-11-12 18:14:01Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
The study finds that cats are better at linking words than babies
The study finds that cats are better at linking words than babies

Cats outperform young children on a simple measure of language comprehension, according to research in the journal Scientific Reports, which found that cats make connections between pictures and words about four times faster than young children. .

Language is the most important tool that people use to communicate.

But the ability to understand speech is not unique to Homo sapiens.

Some monkeys associate spoken words with written symbols or pictures, while African gray parrots can understand and respond to spoken instructions.

Meanwhile, dogs are trained to understand and respond to simple vocabulary.

However, we know much less about humans' other main companion, cats.

"Cats can recognize the sounds of words coming from humans, and more and more studies are proving that cats rely on interacting with humans to solve problems," Carlo Siracusa, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Live Science.

There is even limited evidence that cats can respond with their fingers, and research in the last five years has shown that cats can recognize not only their own names, but also those of familiar people and animals.

But can words and objects connect in general?

To test this theory, Saho Takagi and her team at Azabu University in Japan gave 31 adult cats a simple word game used to investigate the same skill in babies.

The cats were shown two nine-second cartoon clips with recordings of their owners repeating a made-up word over each image.

The sequence of clips – a red sun labeled “paramo” and a blue unicorn with the word “keraru” – was repeated until the cats appeared bored and paid 50% less attention to the screen.

After a short break, the image clips were repeated, but this time, half of the pairings were reversed.

The swapped clips clearly confused the cats, with recordings of "paramo" along with the unicorn and "keraru" with the sun holding the cat's interest an average of 15% longer.

"That the cats noticed this change and were clearly confused by it is good evidence that they had made an association between words and images," write Takagi and colleagues in the study.

"Some cats even looked at the screen with their pupils dilated during the 'switch' state," Takagi told Science magazine.

"It was nice to see how seriously they participated in the experiment," he emphasizes.

The experiment found that the cats were able to learn the combinations from just two nine-second exposures – significantly faster than young children, who needed at least four 20-second trials.


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