Discrimination of cat-directed speech from human-directed speech in a population of indoor companion cats (Felis catus)

Abstract

In contemporary western cultures, most humans talk to their pet companions. Speech register addressed to companion animals shares common features with speech addressed to young children, which are distinct from the typical adult-directed speech (ADS). The way dogs respond to dog-directed speech (DDS) has raised scientists' interest. In contrast, much less is known about how cats perceive and respond to cat-directed speech (CDS). The primary aim of this study was to evaluate whether cats are more responsive to CDS than ADS. Secondarily, we seek to examine if the cats' responses to human vocal stimuli would differ when it was elicited by their owner or by a stranger. We performed playback experiments and tested a cohort of 16 companion cats in a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, which allows for the measurement of subjects' reactions without extensive training. Here, we report new findings that cats can discriminate speech specifically addressed to them from speech addressed to adult humans, when sentences are uttered by their owners. When hearing sentences uttered by strangers, cats did not appear to discriminate between ADS and CDS. These findings bring a new dimension to the consideration of human-cat relationship, as they imply the development of a particular communication into human-cat dyads, that relies upon experience. We discuss these new findings in the light of recent literature investigating cats' sociocognitive abilities and human-cat attachment. Our results highlight the importance of one-to-one relationships for cats, reinforcing recent literature regarding the ability for cats and humans to form strong bonds.

The Power of Discourse: Associations between Trainers’ Speech and the Responses of Socialized Wolves and Dogs to Training

“…She compared the behavioral reactions of captive wolves, dogs, and hybrids of these two subspecies by using separate auditory stimulus patterns: motherese, normal speeches, and mute (no vocal stimuli), and recorded a strong preference of dogs for motherese, while wolves and wolf-dog hybrids showed no preference for any auditory stimulus over another. Our outcomes corroborate Hasting’s work [ 70 ] in regard to dogs’ reactions to high-pitched, intense speech, and points to a different pattern in wolves—a greater interest in low-pitched speeches—likely due to the lack in this subspecies of the domestication effects [ 71 ]. These results may be taken as a standpoint for future studies.…”

First report of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) response to human-given cues.

“…Working dogs showed better obedience to verbal stimuli given by familiar humans compared to strangers (Scandurra et al, 2017). A study by de Mouzon et al (2022) observed that cats respond to pet-directed speech only when addressed by their owner. Hence, it could be interesting to test the effect of the human pointer’s familiarity with the individual reindeer in further studies.…”

Multimodal Communication in the Human–Cat Relationship: A Pilot Study

“…Interestingly, it has been reported that cats transfer this intraspecific communicative behaviour when addressing communications to humans [40,43,44]. However, in previous studies investigating human-cat vocal communication, no tail-up displays were observed in response to human unimodal vocal signals, suggesting that unimodal vocal communication addressed by humans did not trigger visual communicative feedback in cats [8].…”

“…For many cats and dogs living in human environments, humans act as central partners, and companion animals often spend more time with humans than conspecifics [1,2]. Understanding the way our closest non-human companions perceive and react to their human environment is a contemporary topic which has drawn research attention in the past decade [1,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…Additionally, they display the ability to distinguish human emotional expressions [10] and human attentional states [13,20]. Relying upon vocal cues, cats can discriminate their owner from a stranger [8,34] and recognize when speech is specifically addressed to them rather than addressed to human adults [8]. Cats can predict their owner's face upon hearing their voice and mentally map their owner's location relying on vocal cues, suggesting cross-modal mental representation of at least one human [19,35].…”