PET THERAPY THE GREAT SCIENCE OF PUPPY TALK
Baby talking to your pet is beneficial to the human-dog bond, says Dr. Rebecca Ledger.
Do you ever baby talk to your dog — and perhaps feel a little silly doing it? Well, there is good news for those of us who can’t help talking to our puppies like they are human infants, as recent research indicates that this human tendency is more beneficial to the human-dog bond than was previously thought.
In 2017, a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B reported that not only is baby talking to our pets a common practice (and automatic for many people) — it also has an important function. This study involved playing different types of speech to puppies through a speaker — either high-pitched, slow-tempo voices (termed DDS or Dog-Directed Speech) or deeper-pitched, normal speech (termed ADS, or Adult-Directed Speech), the same way we typically speak to adults.
The results revealed that the puppies were more attentive to, and chose to approach the shriller Dog-Directed Speech more readily than the deeper Adult-Directed Speech, suggesting that using a babyish speech pattern gets a puppy’s attention and promotes positive interactions more effectively than using just our normal voice.
Interestingly though, these researchers found that adult and senior dogs did not behave differently according to how they were spoken to. Could that actually be right?
In response to this anomaly, Alex Benjamin and Katie Slocombe from the Department of Psychology at the University of York (UK) decided to delve deeper into how adult dogs respond to our baby talk, by repeating the study, but this time, instead of playing voice recordings through speakers, they asked real people to speak to the dogs face to face. The results published last month in the journal Animal Cognition, reported that the 37 adult dogs tested did indeed respond more attentively towards high-pitched, slower-tempo voices, just as their younger counterparts had in the previous study.
This is good news, as it is obvious to anyone who interacts with dogs on a regular basis that some happy, high-pitched, welcoming words can do wonders to appease a dog who is anxious, shy or in conflict about our presence. Just like with babies, it is thought that the exaggerated emotion (or affect) inherent in Dog-Directed Speech responds to a dog ’s emotional needs, by providing reassurance and also inviting friendly engagement.
But, the next question the researchers wanted to address is whether it’s what you say to a dog or how you say it that’s most important? After all, there are some words that we’d assume dogs are always going to get excited about, regardless of how you say them. … Walkies? Dinner?!
The University of York researchers subsequently ran a second experiment, with the results showing that dogs were most responsive to Dog-Directed Speech when there was a match between the words being spoken and the way they were said. In other words, adult dogs like it best when we say the words they expect to hear while we use our baby talk. For example, dogs feel more positive when we say “Walkies” using Dog-Directed Speech, than if we say random words using the same speech pattern.
Still, it is unclear why dogs find our Dog-Directed Speech talk so alluring. Do high-pitched voices innately signal less aggression? Is Dog-Directed Speech a preference that has arisen during the domestication process? Or, are dogs conditioned while living with us to attend to our baby talk, given that this type of speech is often paired with positive events, such as food, walks, play and affection? Given the results from the first study, where puppies didn’t tend to notice what words people used as long as they were said in a high-pitched voice, learning the meaning of words must have a lot to do with it.
Importantly though, the study has helped to validate why speaking positively to our dogs seems to be beneficial. Our baby talk is a tool that almost anyone can reach for when confronted with an unfamiliar dog or a dog who is stressed. Likewise, the relief and joy dogs experience when they hear we are a friend not a foe makes us feel equally good, too.