How dogs understand human speech

Dog owners, for the most part, are confident that they meet with complete understanding from their pets. And not only on the level of intuition, but also on the level of intelligence. Of course, a certain reaction to speech in dogs is observed, and it is very similar to understanding. A striking example of this is the execution of commands that dogs learn. But do they understand the words themselves or only respond to intonation?

How do dogs understand speech?

Dogs can pick up on the emotions of the person speaking in much the same way that humans can.

According to a recent study conducted at the University of Budapest, dogs can distinguish not only intonation, but also voices and words. According to scientists, a dog’s brain reads the emotions in its owner’s voice in much the same way that the human brain does. That is, when we hear a person speak, we understand what their mood is. In humans, a certain area of the brain is responsible for this. It turns out that dogs do it in much the same way.

They found that in dogs, the left hemisphere was more receptive to the meaning of words than the right hemisphere. And in this case, the brain perceived what it heard, regardless of the speaker’s intonation.

Who doesn’t like to be praised!

The dog’s brain knows how to combine words and intonation and perceive the result

Praise elicited a special reaction from animals. When approval was heard in the intonation, there was a very high level of activity in the centers responsible for pleasure. And the combination of this intonation with the word, which habitually for a dog means praise, caused in these centers even more violent reaction.

From this scientists drew a conclusion that, even perceiving separately sounding words and intonation, the dog is able to combine both, and adequately assess the result. This is evidenced by his reaction.

What do words mean?

The sound and the meaning of a word are different concepts. But it is the former that the dog perceives.

Despite such outstanding comprehension abilities, this does not mean that the meaning of words is available to them. Since praise, as has been established, evokes the most positive emotions in a pet, animals are great at remembering what expressions they are praised with. And, given that these words are periodically repeated, the dog simply remembers their sound and then easily recognizes them.

But so far scientists have only come up with this hypothesis, which needs to be confirmed by conducting an experiment with a large number of dogs. At the same time, much may depend on how evenly the two hemispheres of a particular dog work. It is possible that more effective work of one hemisphere than the other can be explained by the individual abilities of the dog, which have a certain influence on the accuracy of research. Therefore, the question has not yet been fully resolved. Perhaps new research will help scientists determine this more clearly. There is also a question: Was the “option” to distinguish words in dogs originally from wild ancestors or did it come about as a result of communication with humans?