“Who is a good boy? » Humans use dog-specific voices for better canine understanding

The voice people use to address their dogs isn’t just due to their big puppy eyes. Humans slow down their language when talking to their dogs, and this slower pace corresponds to their pets’ receptive skills, allowing the dogs to better understand their commands, according to a study published October 1 in the open access journal. Biology PLOS by Eloïse Déaux of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and colleagues.

Dogs respond to human speech, even though they cannot produce human sounds themselves. To better understand how humans and puppies communicate, scientists analyzed the vocal sounds of 30 dogs.

They also analyzed the sounds of 27 humans speaking to other people in five languages, and 22 humans speaking to dogs in those languages. Scientists have also used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine brain responses to speech in humans and dogs.

The study showed that humans “talk” much faster than dogs, with a speech rate of about four syllables per second, while dogs bark, growl, woof and whine at a rate of about two vocalizations. per second.

When talking to dogs, humans slowed their speech to about three syllables per second. EEG signals from humans and dogs showed that dogs’ neural responses to speech focus on delta rhythms, while human responses to speech focus on faster theta rhythms.

The authors suggest that humans and dogs have different vocal processing systems and that slowing down our speech when talking to pets may have helped us communicate better with them.

The authors add: “Even more interesting is that although dogs use a slow pace to process speech, contrary to popular belief, they need both content and prosody to successfully understand it. .”