Higher voice, slower delivery, more pronounced intonation… Who has never spoken to their dog like a child? Don't worry, this is completely common. This way of speaking to your animal, by spontaneously adapting your voice to attract its attention, is called “dog-directed speech” — literally, language addressed to dogs. But are our dogs really sensitive to it? A study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B explores this very question.
Are dogs sensitive to our “baby voice”?
To find out if this famous “baby talk” really works with dogs, the researchers imagined a fairly simple experiment: women were invited to talk to photos of puppies, adult dogs and elderly dogs, saying sentences like “ How’s the blanket going? ” Or ” Who's the good dog? “. Unsurprisingly, they spontaneously adopted a higher, more expressive and more exaggerated voice, regardless of the age of the dog in the photo.
The researchers then recorded these same sentences with 2 different intonations: the famous “dog talk” and a perfectly neutral voice. These recordings were played to dogs through a loudspeaker, in order to see their reaction without any visual cues being able to influence them.
And there, surprise: the puppies were particularly attentive to this high and expressive voice. They fidgeted, barked, or approached the speaker, while remaining indifferent when the same sentences were spoken in a neutral tone. In adult and elderly dogs, on the other hand, no particular reaction. Our little voice no longer seemed to have the same effect.
A signal easier to spot
This canine cognition experiment, which notably allowed us to focus on the acoustic processing of dogs, highlighted that the pitch of the voice played an important role, especially in younger dogs. Prosody, that is to say the variations in pitch, rhythm and intensity which give our voice its “music”, thus seems to constitute a particularly salient clue for puppies.
We can then hypothesize that this exaggerated voice facilitates selective attention. Among the many sounds that surround a dog, certain characteristics of our voice could indeed attract his attention more. And if, despite everything, we continue to speak “baby” to our adult doggie, it is perhaps not so ridiculous, because this little high-pitched voice would above all be an instinctive way of telling him “ Hey, this message is for you! “.
Be careful, however: being more attentive does not necessarily mean understanding better or learning faster. But after all, if this voice lets your dog know that you are speaking to him, it is already a good start to a conversation… even if he is not likely to respond to you!