Dogs understand the meaning and the emotion of language, study finds

Dogs interpret not just the meaning of simple commands, but also the emotional content of speech, a new study shows.

DEVOTED dog owners often claim their pets understand them. Now scientists say they may be correct.

A new study shows dogs interpret not just the meaning of simple commands, but also the emotional content of speech, mirroring the way people respond to language. It suggests dogs use different brain regions on the opposite side of the brain to process these different aspects of speech, just as humans do.

This adds to mounting evidence that dogs have a sophisticated understanding of human speech.

Victoria Ratcliffe, who led the study at Sussex University, said: “It could be that as we’ve domesticated dogs, we’ve selected dogs that respond better to our voices.”

Attila Andics, a scientist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who was not involved in the study, said: “It indicates that dogs understand both how we say things and what we say. I’m ready to buy the argument that different aspects of human speech are processed differently by the dog’s brain.”

In the latest study, published in the journal Current Biology, scientists played 25 dogs speech sounds through speakers placed at either side of the head so the sounds entered each ear at the same time and volume. Previous work has shown the input from each ear is mainly transmitted to the opposite side of the brain.

“If one hemisphere is more specialised in processing certain information in the sound, then that information is perceived as coming from the opposite ear,” said Ms Ratcliffe.

This meant that if the dog turned to its left, this suggested that the information in the sound was heard more prominently by the left ear, suggesting the right hemisphere is more specialised in processing it.

When dogs were played the words “Come on then” with the intonation removed to give an unemotional sat-nav-style voice, the dogs turned right indicating that the “meaning” information was being processed in the left hemisphere of the brain.

The same result was found when the words were translated into “sine wave speech”, which sounds something like an alien chirruping in a 1960s sci-fi film. Sine wave speech completely masks information about the speaker.

By contrast, when the verbal information was blurred out, but with the intonation and tone of the speaker’s voice intact, most the dogs turned to the left.

“This is what you would find in humans,” said Ms Ratcliffe. “In most people the verbal information is in the left hemisphere and the speaker information is in the right hemisphere.”

The findings suggest dogs are paying attention to emotion and information about the speaker as well as the command being spoken. “If you’ve got a certain emotion in your voice, they can hear it,” she added.

Earlier this year, Dr Andics published research in which pet dogs were placed in an MRI scanner to analyse how their brains responded to emotionally charged sounds such as crying or laughter. This study also found remarkable similarities to the way humans responded to sounds, with roughly the same brain regions being activated. The fact that dogs even have brain areas dedicated to interpreting human voices came as a surprise.

The Times