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Study shows

Cats learn new words faster than toddlers

Cat learns words on a tablet
In a study, cats were shown a picture-word combination on a screen, which the animals learned surprisingly quickly (symbolic image) Photo: Getty Images / Anna Listishenko

October 18, 2024, 9:18 am | Read time: 3 minutes

Many people think that cats understand us less well than dogs because they don’t (or only rarely) listen to commands. However, the animals actually seem to be quite linguistically gifted because they can learn new words faster than small children, according to a Japanese study.

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Every cat owner is probably familiar with this situation: you call a cat but simply get no response. However, this doesn’t seem to be because our animals don’t understand us. A Japanese study shows that cats learn words at least as quickly as dogs – and are also significantly faster than small children. Even though they probably still won’t listen to them.

And they do understand us …

Scientists at Azabu University in Japan have asked themselves whether and how cats can learn words. The study, which involved 31 cats, was published in the journal Scientific Reports. Some of the animals lived in Japanese cat cafés, while others were indoor cats. All of them were used to interacting with people and, above all, to using language in their everyday lives.

In the first experimental set-up, the animals were taught to learn to associate new words with a picture. For this purpose, tablets and laptops were set up for the cats to look at. The animals were then shown pictures of clouds and suns with the invented words “Parumo” and “Keraru.” This was repeated several times until the animals lost interest. The researchers measured how long the cats fixated on the screen and when they turned their heads away.

This is because focusing on certain objects and losing interest when something is no longer new is considered the basis for understanding words. This method is also used in a similar way in research with small children and dogs. This technique has also been used successfully with cats. In a 2019 study, for example, it was found that cats can distinguish their name from other words. They also responded visibly to calls and in some cases moved towards the speaker. 1

Cats are actually quite talented at learning words

Now, you might think that the cats simply lost interest in the repetitive experiment very quickly. However, a second experiment showed that the animals really had learned the words.

When the “wrong” fantasy words were shown alongside the picture, the animals reacted with a prolonged stare or even contracted pupils. Based on the reaction, the authors consider it confirmed that the animals had already linked the words and objects with each other and reacted with confusion when they were switched.

So even if cats don’t always come running when you call them, they probably understand and learn our words well. In the first experiment, the scientists observed that cats only need an average of nine seconds and four repetitions to make the connection between a word and a picture. By comparison, 14-month-old infants need an average of 20 seconds and 16 to 20 repetitions for the same learning success.

More on the topic

What role does domestication play?

The animals were even able to do this without having been trained for the situation beforehand. There was also no reward in the form of a treat. The Japanese scientists, therefore, conclude that many cats are conditioned to understand human utterances as a result of living with us.

Additional research should now show whether cats that are less used to interacting with humans also learn words so quickly. For example, street cats could be studied in order to prove beyond doubt the influence of domestication.

However, there are already indications that this could be the case. In further tests, electronic sounds were also played to the cats. However, they reacted somewhat more positively and more quickly to the human words. 2

This article is a machine translation of the original German version of PETBOOK and has been reviewed for accuracy and quality by a native speaker. For feedback, please contact us at info@petbook.de.

Topics cat behaviour News from science and research

Sources

  1. Saito, A., Shinozuka, K., Ito, Y., Hasegawa, T. (2019) Domestic cats (Felis catus) discriminate their names from other words. Sci Rep 9, 5394 (2019). ↩︎
  2. Takagi, S., Koyasu, H., Nagasawa, M. et al. Rapid formation of picture-word association in cats. Sci Rep 14, 23091 (2024). ↩︎
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