This study provides the first neural evidence for dogs’ heightened responsiveness for speech with exaggerated prosody (specifically to dog- and infant-directed speech (IDS) ) as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS), especially when spoken by women,” Dr. Anna Gábor, a study co-author and postdoctoral researcher at the Neuroethology of Communication Lab at Eötvös Loránd University’s Department of Ethology.
Infants’ behavioral and neural responses to addressee-specific speech prosody have already been widely investigated. In infant studies, natural IDS has been used as an acoustic stimulus. Compared to ADS, IDS has been characterized by heightened pitch, wider pitch range, greater pitch variability and more exaggerated vowels. The function of such addressing style is to make the child highly attentive and to enhance positive emotions during the interaction. This promotes secure bonding between participants, and also has a significant effect on infants’ cognitive, social, and language development. Behavioral studies in infants indicate preference toward IDS over ADS. Interestingly, this preference is typically stronger for female speakers
“Previous research has shown that dogs exhibit a behavioral preference for dog-directed speech. However, it was previously unknown that their brains also react more to this speech style and that they show a preference for women’s dog- and infant-directed speech specifically.
In a nutshell, dog cortical regions responded better to dog-directed and infant-directed speech that to adult style, even better if speaker is a woman.