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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Dog may provide insight on acquiring language

Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with owner John W. Pilley, has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns. Her accomplishment displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.

After retiring in 2004, Pilley read a report about Rico, a border collie that can recognize 200 items. A psychologist who taught for 30 years at Wofford University, Pilley decided to repeat the experiment using a technique he had developed for teaching dogs. To learn more, read the full article by Nicholas Wade in the Science section of the New York Times.

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