Science Says Adult Dogs Don’t Care Much For Your ‘Puppy Talk’
- 7 years ago
A new study about the interaction between humans and dogs has found that while puppies tend to respond to the way humans typically talk to them--in slow, high-pitched voices--adult dogs generally do not.
Scientists continue to learn more about the complex interactions between people and dogs.
A recently published study by an international team of researchers focuses on the way humans tend to speak to their canine pets--with a higher-pitched tone and slower pace of words.
Researchers had 30 women record a greeting while looking at photographs of dogs of varying ages.
The script consisted of the common phrases, “Hi! Hello cutie! Who's a good boy? Come here! Good boy! Yes! Come here sweetie pie! What a Good boy!”
Based on an analysis of the participants’ voices, the team found that human speakers tended to speak similarly to all dogs regardless of the animal’s age aside from a somewhat higher pitch demonstrated with puppies.
However, when researchers played the audio back to dogs without providing any other sensory cues, the puppies responded, but the adult dogs did not.
While the reason was not identified, one of the paper’s authors, Professor Nicolas Mathevon, hypothesized to the BBC, “Maybe we have selected puppies that want to play or engage in interaction with us. And maybe older dogs do not react that way because they are just more choosy and they want only to react with a familiar person.”
As the study indicates, for humans, the speech pattern could be a general way “to facilitate interactions with non-verbal listeners.”
Scientists continue to learn more about the complex interactions between people and dogs.
A recently published study by an international team of researchers focuses on the way humans tend to speak to their canine pets--with a higher-pitched tone and slower pace of words.
Researchers had 30 women record a greeting while looking at photographs of dogs of varying ages.
The script consisted of the common phrases, “Hi! Hello cutie! Who's a good boy? Come here! Good boy! Yes! Come here sweetie pie! What a Good boy!”
Based on an analysis of the participants’ voices, the team found that human speakers tended to speak similarly to all dogs regardless of the animal’s age aside from a somewhat higher pitch demonstrated with puppies.
However, when researchers played the audio back to dogs without providing any other sensory cues, the puppies responded, but the adult dogs did not.
While the reason was not identified, one of the paper’s authors, Professor Nicolas Mathevon, hypothesized to the BBC, “Maybe we have selected puppies that want to play or engage in interaction with us. And maybe older dogs do not react that way because they are just more choosy and they want only to react with a familiar person.”
As the study indicates, for humans, the speech pattern could be a general way “to facilitate interactions with non-verbal listeners.”