An encounter with a dog or a baby makes no difference, as they can often trigger the same behavior almost unintentionally.
You’ve heard the one: a high-pitched coo, an exaggerated accent, and a tone that radiates unconditional love. Scientists refer to this as “exaggerated prosody.” Common people call her “the pretty voice.”
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- According to new research, dogs’ brains are sensitive to children’s language
- Study Encourages Dog Owners to Talk Specially to Their Dogs
According to new research, dogs’ brains are sensitive to children’s language
According to new research, canine brains are sensitive to this tone, which has interesting consequences for how they evolved into man’s best friend.
Researchers from the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University, the Natural Sciences Research Center, and the Eötvös Loránd Research Network used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine on trained and conscious family dogs to determine whether dogs prefer food. corny voice or not.
The pups were then exposed to recorded conversations of 12 males and 12 females, which had been articulated to adults, newborns, or dogs.
The goal was to compare how the dogs’ brains reacted to different types of speech (eg, man-to-adult, man-to-dog, woman-to-baby, etc.) with data previously recorded in newborns. His findings appeared in the journal Communications Biology.
The cute voice is certainly recognizable to the Hungarian scientists who conducted this study. Actress Jennifer Aniston from the TV show Friends is shown using it on both a newborn and a dog in a video accompanying her research.
This juxtaposition is far from coincidental, as the researchers’ papers indicated that canine brains respond to heightened prosody in the same favorable way that our own babies do.
“This study provides the first neural evidence of the greater responsiveness of dogs to speech with exaggerated prosody (specifically to speech directed at dogs and babies) compared to speech directed at adults, especially when spoken by women,” said Dr. Dr. Anna Gábor, co-author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University, according to a Salon report.
“Previous research has revealed that dogs have a behavioral preference for dog-directed speech. However, it was previously understood that their brains respond more strongly to this style of speech, with a predilection for dog-directed and baby-directed speech in females.” in particular”.
Study Encourages Dog Owners to Talk Specially to Their Dogs
When asked if this meant that people who use “cheesy” language with their dogs should feel vindicated, Gábor emphatically replied that it was.
“Yes, our study encourages dog owners to use this special speech style when talking to dogs, because the way we speak has been shown to matter even at the brain level,” Gábor told Salon.
Females outperformed males in the study, indicating that dogs have a clear preference for the sex of the person using the “cutesie” voice.
“Interestingly, the sensitivity of the dog’s brain to dog- and baby-directed speech was determined by the pitch of the voice and its variations,” said Gábor. “This suggests that the intensely modulated tone of voice typically used by women may be more effective when communicating with dogs.”
While some scientific facts remain unknown, anyone who has ever felt the irresistible urge to gibber and squeal at the sight of a cute dog now knows for sure what their heart has always told them: by doing so, they are getting closer to it in a strange way. .
Dogs are mysterious, but their inherent friendship (and therefore their compatibility with people) is often reaffirmed in our everyday encounters. Scientists also realized this during their experiments.
“Before they could participate in fMRI studies, our dogs went through extensive training using social learning and positive reinforcement,” Gábor recounted. “As a result of this training, the dogs became highly motivated to be scanned, even competing with each other to enter the scanner.”
“When another dog came out of the scanner, I called Luna, a Hungarian Vizsla who had been waiting in an adjoining room. Anyone who has ever dealt with a hyperactive dog can guess what happened next.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn