I don’t think this question has been asked before here but I’m wondering about the effect of the age of the dog at the start of the training.
IIRC feral children that learn to communicate as adults have missed their critical period for grammatical expression. In effect there oral skills are akin to “dog speak”. Maybe if the dog starts at age 0 it can lead to more complex word associations. If indeed there is a “grammatical critical period” for dogs even though dogs don’t ever have to use grammars in their natural state that would be a breakthrough in my opinion.
it would be very interesting to see the impact of missing a sense from birth on this. For example, if a dog is born blind and taught at age 0 to communicate with this kind of device, maybe it could sort of rewire the unused parts of his brain to expand even more his speaking skills. Of course the device would have to be enhanced for blind dogs, maybe using braille bumps on top of the buttons, or scented buttons or by making the buttons emit a very faint tone specific to each button.
I don’t think this question has been asked before here but I’m wondering about the effect of the age of the dog at the start of the training.
IIRC feral children that learn to communicate as adults have missed their critical period for grammatical expression. In effect there oral skills are akin to “dog speak”. Maybe if the dog starts at age 0 it can lead to more complex word associations. If indeed there is a “grammatical critical period” for dogs even though dogs don’t ever have to use grammars in their natural state that would be a breakthrough in my opinion.
it would be very interesting to see the impact of missing a sense from birth on this. For example, if a dog is born blind and taught at age 0 to communicate with this kind of device, maybe it could sort of rewire the unused parts of his brain to expand even more his speaking skills. Of course the device would have to be enhanced for blind dogs, maybe using braille bumps on top of the buttons, or scented buttons or by making the buttons emit a very faint tone specific to each button.