Non-verbal communication

Daniel doesn’t always understand non-verbal communication. If I say to him, “what colour is that car?” and there are four cars in the vicinity, he won’t know which one I’m referring to. That was until this week. While Ben has been away, Daniel has been forced to come on dog walks with me and I decided we needed to do something about this so we started playing a game. I say to him: “what colour is that fence?”. He has to look at me first to see where my finger is pointing and then look at whatever it is I’m pointing at to determine the colour. He really enjoyed the game and figured it out pretty quickly. It still doesn’t come naturally to him to look to me first, but at least he knows he needs to do it.

It seems so strange that someone would need to be taught to do this. Elizabeth and even Freud and Zeki have always been able to do this. In fact I read somewhere once that dogs are better able to understand non-verbal cues from humans than chimpanzees are. Non-verbal communication is so important though. I can easily elaborate on this game by indicating my point of interest through other means, like a nod of the head. Maybe tomorrow.