It’s easy to become frustrated when, despite your best efforts your dog is ignoring your commands on a routine basis. It’s something most dog owners will likely experience at one time or another, and it can inevitably lead to the question: Does my dog have selective hearing?
Humans have the capacity to focus on specific sounds even in loud and complex sound environments. For example, you can converse with a friend at a concert. But what of our canine companions?
We have the cognitive skills to tune out some sounds, but this is more difficult for dogs because of their neurological ability. Focusing on what’s important to their wellbeing, dogs tune into sounds that deal with food, their name and discipline.
Evan MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona suggests that dogs have “selective attention” instead of selective hearing. In general, when animals put all their cognitive resources towards stimuli and ignore less important stimuli, that is the process of selective attention. It is possible for dogs to selectively focus on certain auditory stimuli and ignore others that they find irrelevant, according to MacLean.
Researchers at the University of Lincoln in the U.K. compared the hearing and auditory functions of dogs and humans. The study found that humans are often guilty of assuming a dog’s hearing abilities are similar to their own and, as a result, attempt to communicate with dogs in a manner that is not always effective.
Other studies have shown that dogs and their owners commonly develop similar personalities. If the owner’s training is substandard or lazy, then the dog will become less likely and able to accurately acknowledge and subsequently obey commands.
“If the dog is well trained and secure in its relation to the human handler then the environment shouldn’t make any difference,” Scheifele concludes.
So, does my dog have selective hearing?
From Discover.