A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggests that cats accommodate to human language more quickly than we previously thought. According to the researchers, cats demonstrate a superior ability to associate words with pictures when compared to human babies.
Cats have been associated with humans for around 10,000 years, which may have played an essential role in developing their ability to recognize basic language patterns, notes Brittany Florkiewicz, an evolutionary psychologist at Lyon College who was not involved in the work. “So it makes sense that they can learn these types of associations.” In recent years, various studies have revealed surprising facts about feline language skills. In 2019, a team of Japanese researchers observed that cats respond specifically to their names by moving their heads and ears. By 2022, they discovered that cats are capable of matching names with the photos of known humans and the members of their feline family.
“I was very surprised because that meant cats were able to eavesdrop on human conversations and understand words without any special reward-based training,” says Saho Takagi, a comparative cognitive scientist at Azabu University and member of the 2022 study. She wondered: Are cats “hard-wired” to learn human language?
Takagi and her former teammates tested 31 adult cats, including pets that were up for adoption at cat cafes, using a type of word test similar to one used for human babies. Each cat sat in front of the screen, where they watched two different animated images associated with made-up words like “keraru” or “parumo”. After watching the sequence of images several times, they took a short break and then saw the images again with the mismatched words. It has been noted that the cats spent 33% longer watching the laptop when they saw the words didn’t align with the pictures. It suggests that they had learned word associations. Takagi says. “Some cats even gazed at the screen with their pupils dilated during the ‘switched’ condition,” she says. “It was cute to see how seriously they participated in the experiment.”
It was shocking that cats learned to associate words with images after only two 9-second samples while most 14-month-old human babies need four 15-second lessons. “Cats pay attention to what we say in everyday life—and try to understand us—more than we realize,” Takagi says.
Still, the results don’t necessarily mean human babies are slower to learn words than our feline friends, says Janet Werker, a developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia. Takagi says, “Critically, cats appear to be learning these word associations without any training or clear promise of reward for doing so—the same way babies learn languages.”
Future research can be done to study how different organisms learn human language or associate human speech with images. Understanding these facts by exploring similarities and differences among species might reveal more about their behavior of language acquisition.
You can also see the video in this article published in Nature for more information.
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