New Study Has Interesting Findings About How Dogs Hear Their Owners
If you ever feel like your dog ignores you, you may not be wrong. Especially if you're a man. A recent study published by Neuroscience News on August 22 claims that dogs are more receptive to speech directed at them, especially when spoken by women.
Check out the following.
The study, published in Communications Biology, reports that Hungarian researchers at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, the Research Centre for Natural Sciences and the Eötvös Loránd Research Network revealed exciting similarities between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with exaggerated prosody.
In simplified terms, this means that the dog- and infant-directed speech sensitivity of dog brains was more pronounced when the speakers were women and was affected by voice pitch and its variation.
These results suggest that the way we speak to our dogs does matter, and that their brain is specifically sensitive to the exaggerated prosody typical to the female voice.
The study also says that this could be because women tend to talk more to dogs than men during natural playing situations and use more exaggerated prosody, like in baby talk. Using a sing-song voice (which is what the study authors mean when they say "exaggerated prosody" ) when speaking to a small child with limited language understanding, typically in order to get their attention, works just as well on your dog.
On Facebook, @William comments, "I know that cat’s respond more to baby talk but I am a bit surprised that dogs do as well. I have seen so many dogs bond to their male owners that I think both men and women are loved equally."
I personally don't feel the study is saying dogs love their female owners more, just that they respond better to the female voice especially when spoken to in a sing-song, sort of baby talk way. Which sounds like a pretty fun contest to try this weekend, with a male in the family asking the dog to do something using exaggerated prosody. Then a female in the house can try the same.
Let's say the loser has to take the family dog out to do his business at 4 am!
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