[leot]

It's unclear why the researchers believe that when a dog doesn't learn the names of a bunch of toys it means that they can't.

There are lots of things people are able to learn today that they "couldn't" a few years ago (programming, math, reading). How are the researchers able to tell that the limitation lies with the dog and not with the trainer/household?

[swatcoder]

Indeed! The article talks about some kind of rare "genius" trait, but the findings just seem to demonstrate that there exists some dogs that were able to demonstrate a big vocabulary in their tests. Many people with dogs already knew that, but it's a sound finding to have citable anyway (especially since some people still hold weirdly dismissive beliefs about everyday animal intelligence).

But it doesn't say anything scientific about whether this is an inherent trait rather than a contextual outcome, what the frequency of any such trait might be, whether the dogs that failed the tests were incapable rather than indifferent, etc. Of course, the exact same pattern of ovverstatement shows up in human behavioral and psychological research, so we shouldn't be surprised to see it here :)

[detourdog]

I agree just like any learning it involves engagement of some type>