Every time we see these fluffy creatures, many of us automatically change our voice: we start talking to dogs as if they were children, raising our pitch and using diminutive affectionate words. However, as a recent study showed, dogs perceive such speech poorly; instead, to achieve maximum closeness with them, one should speak slowly.
In the process of domesticating dogs, we have learned to understand each other to some extent. Today, these animals can recognize certain key words and associate them with specific actions or events, understand our speech at the level of intonation and gestures, and even use different types of barking to express their needs or emotions. But what have humans done to improve communication with their pets? Scientists from the University of Geneva in Switzerland took on this question.
How Humans and Dogs Communicate
To start, the researchers decided to analyze the vocalizations of dogs (from howling to growling) — they had a total of 143 audio recordings from 30 animals. They then listened to the speech of 27 adults talking to each other (106 recordings), and afterwards, conversations of 22 people with dogs (149 files).
In the second part of the study, the authors compared the brain activity of all participants using non-invasive electroencephalography to study the brain's response to speech in both humans and dogs.
It turned out that humans speak significantly faster than dogs: our speech rate is about 4 syllables per second, while animals "articulate" no more than two syllables per second. However, when a dog owner addressed their pet, their speech involuntarily slowed down slightly — to three syllables. According to the researchers, the understanding that one needs to speak more slowly is an innate quality.
EEG signals also showed that dogs' neural responses to human speech are focused on slower "delta" rhythms, while humans' responses to speech are focused on faster "theta" rhythms. This means that humans and dogs have different voice processing systems.
The authors of the study emphasize that to establish better contact with the animal, we should slow down our speech by about half. "Contrary to popular belief, for successful understanding, dogs need to perceive both content and intonation," the researchers concluded.
