We knew it!
If you’re one of those people who talk to dogs more than humans, then good news! New research has confirmed that your dog actually understands what you’re saying.
This ground breaking study found that dogs can decipher both the meaning of words and the intonation that you use to speak to them. So, if you’ve been saying cruel things to your pet in a high-pitched baby voice, it may be time to pick up the phone and apologise to your long suffering canine.
These new and exciting findings shows that dogs are more like humans than previously thought. According to the researchers, they process language using the same regions of the brain as people.
Attila Andics and colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, used 13 family dogs for the experiments, mostly golden retrievers and border collies.
They trained the dogs to sit still for seven minutes in a MRI scanner in order to measure the doggies brain activity.
A trainer whose voice was familiar to the dogs then spoke words of praise, such as “that’s it”, “clever” and “well done”, then they spoke neutral words that they believed has no meaning to the dogs like “yet” and “if”.
They found from brain scans that the dogs processed familiar words regardless of intonation, the same way humans do.
So what does this mean?
Well according to the researchers
“It shows that for dogs, a nice praise can very well work as a reward, but it also works best if both words and intonation match. So dogs not only tell apart what we say and how we say it, but they can also combine the two, for a correct interpretation of what those words really mean.”
Exciting times for dog lovers!
