Forget bowwows and woofs, a Frostburg State University student has researched a canine communication project that she hopes will fundamentally reshape how humans interact with their four-legged companions.
Delilah Ricketts '27 presented her project “Social Learning of Human/Dog Communication (Canis familiaris)” at the FSU Undergraduate Research Symposium this past spring. Working alongside her is professor and chair of the Psychology and Social Work Department Dr. Erica Kennedy. Ricketts’ study focuses on the extent to which dogs can understand through learning behavior and social modeling.
With pet owners using pre-recorded words and phrases on soundboard buttons, Ricketts explores a more intuitive response called social modeling. Social modeling, in Ricketts’ case, teaches the dog how the buttons can be used to inspire dogs. In her research, Ricketts used Kennedy’s four-year-old goldendoodle, Mochi.
By using communication buttons designed by a company called FluentPet, Mochi could communicate using essential words such as “play,” “outside,” “help” and “eat.”
“Being able to use this information to avoid pitfalls that criticisms discuss and better understand how to use social learning in training was a great advantage.”
The project research was inspired by famed speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger’s pioneering work “How Stella Learned to Talk,” as well as data from the University of California San Diego in 2024.
Ricketts continued her research with her own dogs this past summer. She is hoping for more tail-wagging results.
“Working on this project was very inspiring,” she said. “I aim to observe not only the dog-human social learning aspect but dog-to-dog social learning, which I am very excited for.”
Good student! 🐾
