Rebecca Manzi Speaking slowly with dogs helps us understand better: in fact, they express themselves much more slowly than we do
@Ivan Babydov/Pexels
New researches indicate that, by slowing down our speech while talking to dogs, human-animal understanding is dramatically improved. According to researchers at the University of Geneva, humans naturally speak with their dogs more slowly than they do with people-about three syllables per second. This rate fits better into the dogs’ capacity for the processing of sound at a slower pace than that in human beings.
Dogs, in fact, bark, growl, and whine at about two vocalizations per second, whereas the average human speech rate is about four syllables per second. When people speak to their pets, they instinctively tend to slow down their voices; this helps the dogs understand, not only the commands being given, but also the emotional tone of the human speech.
Tone and content matter too
Studies using EEG to monitor the neural responses of dogs have shown that in processing language, a dog uses delta rhythms, which are slower, compared to theta rhythms in the human brain. That means dogs respond more powerfully to a slower-speaking rhythm because it fits within their capability of perceiving and understanding vocal sounds.
Beyond just the speaking velocity, prosody in content and tone of voice also plays a critical role in easing communication between humans and dogs. Dogs are sensitive to changes in tone that could probably help them understand the emotional meaning behind words. This would, therefore, make commands and ordinary interactions more possible.
This suggests that, in turn, humans and dogs accommodated each other, and with time, communication between humans and dogs evolved to understand each other better, even when apparent differences in language were present. Perhaps this special bond is one of the underlying reasons for the close evolution between our species and those four-legged friends, further helped by these vocal adjustments.
Source: PLOS Biology
