From button presses to situated communicative events: a methodological framework for canine augmentative and alternative communication research under interpretive uncertainty

Abstract

Soundboard-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) with domestic dogs is now culturally visible, with some widely circulated videos reaching very large audiences while public interpretation often outruns empirical evidence. As citizen-science cohorts associated with soundboard platforms and large-vocabulary boards expand, the field needs a middle path between uncritical celebration of ‘talking dogs’ and reflexive dismissal of the phenomenon. This article proposes such a path as a practical methodological framework for researchers entering the field. Its central claim is that the appropriate unit of analysis is not the isolated button press but the situated communicative event: the press together with the dog’s body orientation, gaze, prior activity, environmental context, human response, interaction history, ambiguity, non-use, and later disconfirmation. The article does not claim evidence of semantic communication in dogs. Instead, it distinguishes operationally among signalling, requesting, association learning, and semantic communication; proposes a six-class press typology with paired counter-categories and worked coding examples; integrates an interspecies-pragmatics perspective drawing on Sperber and Wilson, Peltola and Simonen, and Lemaire; treats ambiguous, negative, and disconfirmed observations as primary data; sets out welfare-centred safeguards and open-science commitments; discusses how AI video coding can support, but not replace, human interpretation; specifies eight empirical patterns that would count against the framework; and closes with a worked example study design. The article is a hypothesis and theory contribution for scientifically defensible interpretation of canine AAC use under uncertainty.