Dogs respond to praise, and they not only listen to the words but also to the tone of voice and inflections, a recent study shows. While inside the fMRI, a trainer spoke praise and neutral words in varying intonations as the scientists looked for activity in the brain regions that could suggest the differentiation of praise and neutral words, and praise and neutral intonations.
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Main researcher Dr Attila Andics, of EötvösLorand University, Budapest, said at the time of speech processing, a well-known labor distribution takes place inside the human brain.
The scans showed that the dog’s reward center was activated only when the trainers used praise words in a praising intonation. Dogs can actually understand our human-speak to them both by our words and voice tone.
The team found that – like humans – meaningful words were processed in the dogs’ left hemisphere.
Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest have found that dogs can not only understand the words we speak, but also how we say them. The left hemisphere of the canine brain processes meaning, while tone of voice is dealt with in the right hemisphere.
“The hard aspect of the training was to convince dogs that “motionless” means really motionless”, says Andics. When processing intonation, the dogs favored the right brain hemisphere.
A new study suggests that your dog may have a better grasp of what you’re saying to them than previously thought, according to the New York Times. Neutral or meaningless words, such as “even if”, “although” and “however”, also were said in both intonations.
So be careful what you say around your dog, lest you be judged.
In hindsight, one can say that dogs are indeed more intelligent than we think they are. It did not light up when they heard words that had no meaning to them.
During the study, the researchers played a recording of different words which were spoken by their trained in different tones.
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The news might not be a surprise for dog owners. “We don’t know. It has never been tested”.
