If you’ve talked to your dog, looked into their eyes, and seen understanding in them, maybe you’re just not a hopelessly devoted pet owner. After all, most of us wonder if our dogs understand what we say when we talk to them.

A fascinating study by the University of Geneva and the Hearing Institute provides a glimpse into this field, showing how dogs and their human counterparts overcome interspecies communication barriers when humans talk to their dogs.

people talking to dogs

First, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room, or in this case, the dog. Do you change your voice when talking to your beloved dog? This seemingly odd trait turns out to play an important role in interspecies communication, especially when humans talk to their dogs.

According to animal behaviorist and neuroscientist Eloise Do, this voice modulation helps bridge the gap between the different speech rates of dogs and humans. Simply put, when talking to dogs we slow down our speech to mimic their typical speech rate.

“People slow down their speech when addressing their pets; This is a change that brings them closer to a dog’s typical speech rate and makes them easier to understand,” explains Eloise Deo.

So why is there such a difference?

This relates not only to anatomical differences, but also to complex brain mechanisms, in particular neural oscillations, electrical patterns that arise as a result of the synchronous activity of neurons in the brain.

A dog’s brain waves

Brain waves or neural oscillations are classified by frequency. Delta waves operate in the range of 0.5 to 4 hertz (Hz), while theta waves have a frequency of 4 to 7 Hz. Each frequency range plays a unique role in cognitive mechanisms. For example, in human language perception, gamma waves encode phonemes, theta waves encode syllables, and delta waves encode intonation.

Ann-Lise Giraud, professor of neurology and the driving force behind the project, explains that applying brain oscillation research to dogs is truly groundbreaking. The research team adapted non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) protocols to study the brain waves of dogs and humans in response to auditory stimuli.

Surprisingly, in humans theta waves are associated with the acoustic environment, whereas in dogs the seemingly slower delta waves take over. So how does this help us understand what Fido is thinking?

I’m lost in translation

People can easily communicate their understanding of a sound stimulus verbally or in writing. But when it comes to dogs, the situation is completely different. The researchers used a language of commands directed at the dog, which allowed them to measure the intelligibility of the stimulus to the dog through the application of various commands.

With this new approach, the researchers modulated the recorded sentences, slowing them down or speeding them up.

“For example, to obtain a state without content, we replace the host command input with its opposite. So “sit” becomes something like “it”. We then reverse the prosody to match the original signal,” explains Eloise Deo.

Dogs understand people when they talk

Researchers found that dogs do not respond very quickly to spoken commands. They can process human speech, but only if it is in the delta range of 1 to 3 Hz. Loss of content also affects comprehension. The intelligibility of commands is significantly reduced due to prosody alone.

This research busts the myth that dogs only care about our intonation. Although syllables are not the main means of understanding for dogs, unlike us, it turns out that phonological context plays a very important role. Most importantly, the results show a deep connection between understanding and fluctuations. The more theta waves in humans and delta waves in dogs overlap the signal envelope, the higher the level of understanding.

Man’s best friend or coincidence?

This study from the University of Geneva suggests that dogs and humans have adapted to communicate effectively with each other. So is this just a dog-human dynamic? Do other pets exhibit the same adaptive communication?

An interesting direction for future research is to compare this phenomenon with other non-domesticated canids, such as wolves, to determine which linguistic abilities are innate in dogs and which are socially conditioned.

Eloise concludes: “A better understanding of the mechanisms of the dog’s brain will allow us to learn about humans and our evolution, as this animal is evolutionarily very distant from us, and also to improve training methods for our four-legged friends.” Deo.

The next time you interact with your pup, remember that there’s more going on than tail wagging and wet noses. Whether you’re talking about a walk in the park or a good behavior treat, know that you’re using a style of communication that’s been around for thousands of years. And there is nothing to bark about! The study was published in the journal PLoS Biology.