They also said other words which would have been meaningless to dogs, such as “as if” and “yet” in both tones.
Advertisement
Dog owners who like to talk to their beloved Fido can rest assured that their pooch may actually understand what they are trying to say, according to a new study.
You can get a dog stoked about anything, even going to the vet, if you say it like you’re really excited about it.
The blood flow in the dogs’ brains were studied as they listened to positive phrases like “good boy”, “well done” and “clever” being said in an uplifting tone and in a neutral tone. Hence, the researchers came to a conclusion that both the words and the tone of the human speech matter when they try to communicate with canines.
“One important thing is that we don’t claim that dogs understand everything we say, of course”, Andics told The Huffington Post in an email.
Andics said the findings suggest that the mental ability to process language evolved earlier than previously believed and that what sets humans apart from other species is the invention of words. The left hemisphere of the brain also plays a dominant role in how humans process language. After training was complete, each dog was given an MRI scan to measure their brain activity.
“There’s no acoustic reason for this difference”, says study leader Attila Andics.
Dogs were trained to lie still on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine for a couple of minutes, while scientists measured their brain activity.
Can’t help talking to your dog?
“We’ve found that in dog brains, very similarly to what was found in the human brain, the left hemisphere is more involved in processing meaningful words”, he said. The neutral words did not garner the same response, showing that dogs have some understanding of their meaning (or lack thereof).
And now, science has confirmed what dog lovers already suspected: Dogs’ brains process speech a lot like humans’. That’s basically the same way humans respond to speech, too.
Andics said, “They are really happy to participate”.
Advertisement
Interestingly, it was only when the intonation and the meaning matched up that the dogs seemed to feel praised.
