When it comes to our four-legged furry friends, we often wonder how much they understand us. One of the most common questions people have when it comes to our canine companions is whether or not they respond to tone of voice. It’s understandable to think that our beloved pets may be able to pick up on how we are feeling based on our pitch in our voice, but does that really hold true? In this blog post, we will explore the scientific evidence behind whether or not dogs respond to tone of voice and provide an in-depth look at the research surrounding this curious topic.
As pet owners, it’s important for us to understand the various ways that our canine companions communicate with us and how we can interact with them. We all know that dogs are incredibly sensitive creatures, but do they really pick up on our tone of voice? In this blog post, we will dive into the science behind this phenomenon and provide a comprehensive look at the available evidence. We will take a
Find the right tone for your dog
How many dogs respond to their owners during training depends greatly on the volume and tone of the male and female voices.
To get their dog’s attention, men frequently need to learn how to lower their volume, respond positively, and raise the pitch of their voice.
Women frequently need to learn how to project a more authoritative, firm message while lowering their voice tone and turning up the volume so their dog can hear them.
Controlling your voice volume and tone will help you communicate with your dog more effectively and train him to respond appropriately. When training your dog, experiment with a few different tones to see which ones get their attention. As previously stated, training your dog is a lengthy process, so be prepared to put any strategies you choose to use into practice and refine them.
These findings should come with a grain of salt. Functional MRIs don’t always provide full pictures of brain activity, and they’ve been known to produce false positives (paywall), even suggesting that dead salmon had some kind of brain activity (which they don’t). Even short of a mechanical glitch, 13 dogs can hardly speak for the entire population of canines.Advertisement
In order to conduct their research, Andics and her team trained 13 dogs to remain still in an fMRI machine that measures blood flow. More blood indicates that an area is receiving more oxygen delivery and is therefore being used more actively than usual. The dogs were listening to human speech, and they looked at the dogs’ brains. Dogs were exposed to words they had never heard before with both types of intonation as well as praise in both friendly and neutral tones.
Your dog can tell when you’re giving him genuine praise and when you’re just saying it to make him feel good.
Still, this research suggests that dogs and other animals are capable of understanding human language on a slightly deeper level than it may seem. We have a long history of training dogs to respond to auditory commands, and previous research has shown that dogs recognize some of our emotions. Canines may actually combine these two abilities to interpret our words—at least when it comes to praise.
“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 meant,” Attila Andics, an animal behaviorist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and lead author of the paper said in a press release (pdf). “This is very similar to what human brains do.”
He claims that the majority of dog owners have tried to “trick” their dogs by speaking incoherently and joyfully while doing so. Andics notes that since the dogs were inside the device, “I think the big difference here is that they only heard us, they didn’t see us.” “Here, the only information they had was the speech signal. What we observed is that both word meaning and intonation must fit for praise to be processed as a reward when there is no other supporting information. “.
Furthermore, he claims that this study is significant because, to his knowledge, it is the first to make a significant discovery using noninvasive neuroscience on awake animals; typically, these animals must be sedated or restrained. “That just changes everything,” he says. “Like with people, you can literally see what’s going on in their brains.” And this is really the first time that it has resulted in a significant discovery, and I believe we will see a lot more of this in the future. “.
He claims that researchers have been examining fossils and great apes to determine the precise timing of that left hemispheric shift. According to Hare, the truth appears to be that humans have an exaggerated left hemisphere bias when it comes to processing words or meaning in communication. “Its not something completely new to our species. “.
For decades, scientists have believed that a big shift occurred in human evolution that made our brains left hemisphere dominant in processing communication, and that this is what led to the evolution of our unique language abilities, says Brian Hare, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences in Durham, N.C.
All the dogs in the study were willing volunteers and were trained to lie still in the scanner using a training method developed by Marta Gacsi. The dogs could get up and leave the machine whenever they wanted. But it was clear to the dogs that their human companions loved it when they did this very easy task.
FAQ
Should you raise your voice with a dog?
Raising your voice won’t make your dog understand what you want them to do. It simply leaves your dog with a negative emotional memory. Those memories will probably have an impact on your dog’s emotional health, future behavior, and relationship with you, especially if you frequently raise your voice.
Do dogs understand language or tone?
Amazingly, dogs can interpret human body language and intonation. Our dogs are more intelligent than just “Sit,” “Stay,” and “Walk.” Many words can be taught to them, and when we say them in the right tone, they can understand their meaning even better.
Do dogs respond better to deeper voices?
Pitch, tone, and volume of voice are just a few variables that affect how you sound to your dog. There are always exceptions, she continues, “but generally speaking, dogs do tend to respond more favorably to people with a higher pitch and softer tone.
Do dogs respond better to high pitched voices?
In a series of experiments, dogs were spoken to in a high-pitched voice and then in a voice that is typical for an adult. The scientists then kept track of which speaker the dogs responded to and sought out. According to PhD candidate Alex Benjamin, it appeared that dogs were more inclined to favor the speaker who had a high pitch.