Humans can communicate with dogs using soundboards, study suggests

Study described as necessary first step' in discovering whether dogs and humans can use push-button devices to communicate

It has become a hot-button topic among dog lovers: can humans and canines communicate with each other using a soundboard? Now researchers say they have taken the first steps towards finding out, revealing that dogs trained to use such devices respond to the pre-recorded words just as they do to spoken words.

Here we show that actually [dogs] do pay attention to the [soundboard] words and they produce appropriate behaviours independently of environmental cues and who produces the word," said Prof Federico Rossano, of the University of California San Diego, who led the research.