Cats Associate Words With Images Faster Than Babies, New Study Finds

In recent years, scientists have begun to prove something that might surprise the pet parents of aloof kitties: cats are pretty much word wizards (yes, even orange ones). Previous studies have found that cats can recognize their pet parents’ voices, learn their own name and the names of other cats, and match emotional facial expressions with sounds. A new study found more evidence that cats are paying attention to language: Felines can quickly learn to associate human words with images.

The study

Researchers tested 31 cats using a word-object association test previously used on 8-14 month old human infants. The cats were all sourced from cat cafes or households. Researchers showed the cats two images: a “sun” image and a “pegasus” image. One of the pictures was red, and the other was blue, allowing cats to discern the colors. The photos were animated to shrink and expand.

The pet parents of the cats each recorded themselves speaking the words “parumo” and “keraru” (two nonsense words) over and over again with different intonations.

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Cats were then put in front of laptop computers. The cats were presented with one of the nonsense words paired with one of the images (for example: “parumo” with the sun image), followed by the other word and image pair (“keraru” and the pegasus image).

The cats were then given a short break. After the break, they were presented with the animations again — but this time, the words they heard were switched. After the switch, cats stared at the monitor longer, and some of the cats’ pupils dilated.

Their reactions suggest that the cats were focusing more during the switched trial — meaning they were trying to understand the new situation. “These results indicate that cats detected the switching of the combination of pictures and sounds by forming word-picture associations,” wrote Saho Takagi, the study’s lead author.

“It is noteworthy that cats made the picture-word association after only brief exposure,” Tagaki added. In fact, the cats made the associations more quickly than human infants did in previous experiments. This means that our cat might be catching on to more of those lengthy human-feline conversations than you think. They may not act like they’re paying attention, but don’t underestimate your kitties: they’re better listeners than they let on.