‘Who’s a good boy?!’ Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech

Abstract

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a special speech register thought to aid language acquisition and improve affiliation in human infants. Although IDS shares some of its properties with dog-directed speech (DDS), it is unclear whether the production of DDS is functional, or simply an overgeneralisation of IDS within Western cultures. One recent study found that, while puppies attended more to a script read with DDS compared with adult-directed speech (ADS), adult dogs displayed no preference. In contrast, using naturalistic speech and a more ecologically valid set-up, we found that adult dogs attended to and showed more affiliative behaviour towards a speaker of DDS than of ADS. To explore whether this preference for DDS was modulated by the dog-specific words typically used in DDS, the acoustic features (prosody) of DDS or a combination of the two, we conducted a second experiment. Here the stimuli from experiment 1 were produced with reversed prosody, meaning the prosody and content of ADS and DDS were mismatched. The results revealed no significant effect of speech type, or content, suggesting that it is maybe the combination of the acoustic properties and the dog-related content of DDS that modulates the preference shown for naturalistic DDS. Overall, the results of this study suggest that naturalistic DDS, comprising of both dog-directed prosody and dog-relevant content words, improves dogs’ attention and may strengthen the affiliative bond between humans and their pets.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10071-018-1172-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Can Dogs’ Origins and Interactions with Humans Affect Their Accomplishments? A Study on the Responses of Shelter and Companion Dogs during Vocal Cue Training

“…An alternative interpretation for these associations was that the trainers behaved more positively (i.e., using neutral or gentle tones of voice) in sessions when the dogs performed better. However, considering the fact that we also recorded reproachful speech used in tandem with good dog performance, and considering studies which have reported the effects of human behavior on their responses (e.g., [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]), we think this interpretation is improbable. Different emotional responses of dogs to interactions with humans have been demonstrated to be dependent on human behavior/attitude.…”

“…Gentle speech, and maybe also laughter, fit within a specific type of speech used with dogs, characterized by a high-pitched voice (high frequency) and affectionate content, known as “dog-directed speech”. Dogs prefer when humans use this type of speech to talk to them, demonstrating this by getting closer and looking at them for longer, and both the patterns of rhythm and sound (prosody) and content of the speech matter [ 31 , 65 ]. In our study, when using gentle speech, the trainers praised the dogs, and praise may also function as a type of positive reinforcement [ 23 ].…”

“…A dog’s ability to attend to a cue may also be influenced by the vocal information the trainer includes before the cue (e.g., saying the dog’s name or an unknown word [ 29 ]); even if the dog is familiar with the cue, this vocal information may reduce the dog’s performance. Studies have been conducted on the motivation and effects of people’s tones of voice when communicating with dogs (e.g., [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]) but as far as we know, no studies have investigated associations between trainer vocal behavior and the behavioral responses of dogs during training. A study of vocal cue learning, considering the effect of dog origin and possible associations between trainers’ behaviors and dogs’ responses, has the potential to improve our understanding of dog learning processes and abilities.…”

Talking to Cows: Reactions to Different Auditory Stimuli During Gentle Human-Animal Interactions

“…Furthermore, the mismatch of experimenter and playback voice did not have a significant effect on any of the behaviors. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of literature in different species indicating that they do not necessarily distinguish playback from live auditory stimuli: playback is used successfully in studies investigating bird behavior (Douglas and Mennill, 2010 ), dogs react to dog-directed human speech played back from a loudspeaker (Ben-Aderet et al, 2017 ; Benjamin and Slocombe, 2018 ), and dairy cows increase their production when exposed to a playback of calf vocalizations (Pollock and Hurnik, 1978 ; McCowan et al, 2002 ; no effect if calves are reared with their mothers: Zipp et al, 2013 ). Other characteristics of speech might thus have a stronger impact on the animals' behavior than the characteristics induced by the type of source.…”

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“…Indeed, the tone of voice is a very important factor to consider. Research carried out by Benjamin and Slocombe (2018) suggested that using a dog‐directed tone, similar to that used with small children, improved canine attention and enhanced affiliative bonds.…”