Owner's beliefs on the ability of their pet dogs to understand human verbal communication: A case of social understanding

We asked Hungarian pet dog owners to fill out a questionnaire about their v erbal communication toward their dogs. Thirty-seven owners listed 430 diffe rent utterances (30 on average), which they thought their dogs knew. Twenty -one percent of these were synonyms. Utterances could be ranged into catego ries of actions (in ascending order of occurrence): Disallowance, Posture, Invitation, Referring to object or person, Unique, Information giving, Perm ission, Question. Owners believed that dogs executed 31% of commands "every time", 53% "in contextually adequate situations", and 16% only "occasional ly". Age of the owners or dogs, breed of dogs, and the educational status o f owners did not strongly affect the utterance structure. A large share of synonyms and actions were believed to be executed only in adequate situatio ns, supporting our idea that the communication between dogs and owners coul d be described as a form of social understanding. Social understanding is d efined as a complex cognitive process in which the subject is able to integ rate contextual and social information, and modify his/her behaviour accord ingly. The owners' verbal commands accompanying gestural and contextual cue s could operate as information which facilitates the understanding process.