Some dogs can learn new words as quickly as a two-year-old child according to a new study.

The study, from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, tested two of social media’s top dogs to see how quickly they can pick up words.

It found that Norwegian Border Collie Whisky and Brazilian Yorkshire Terrier Vicky Nina were able to learn the names of new toys after hearing them just four times.

The dogs were tested under ‘exclusion-based’ conditions and while playing with their owners – and were able to learn the words best while playing.

Norwegian Border Collie Whisky. Image: Claudia Fugazza

In the exclusion-based task, the dogs were presented with a new toy among seven others they were already familiar with.

They were told the name of the new toy four times and were able to pick it out from among their old ones when asked to do so.

However, when they were presented with two new toys and asked to pick the one they had ‘learned’ the name of, they were unable to do so.

In the playful task, their owners repeated the name of the new toy four times while playing and this time, the dogs were able to pick the toy by name from a choice of two new toys.

Researcher Claudia Fugazza with Norwegian Border Collie Whisky and her owners. Image: Claudia Fugazza

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, study author Claudia Fugazza said appear to learn best through play.

“This research tried to replicate the results of previous studies where dogs were trained to learn new toy names in an exclusion-based task where they were requested to identify a new toy by hearing a new name when this new toy was placed among some familiar toys,” she said.

“The dogs were successful in the exclusion-based task but there was no strict control for word-learning so we do not know whether these dogs had actually associated the word to the new toy.

“Basically, we think that the way these talented dogs - dogs that can learn object names - learn the name of their toy is probably through social interactions with their owners.”

The researchers then tested 20 other dog breeds – and found that none of them were able to pick up the words as quickly as the two ‘gifted’ breeds.

Previous research has suggested Border Collies are top dogs for languages with research published in Science Direct finding that a collie named Chaser was able to learn the names of more than 1,000 objects.