Study claims that talking to your dog as if he were a baby can strengthen your friendship

For some reason that almost no one is able to explain, every time we approach to pet our pet, we talk to him as if he were a baby. Whether it’s a puppy or a big dog, we inevitably express ourselves with affectionate and childish words. Nobody taught us to communicate that way with them, we just talk like that.

But… does this “language” have any practical effect on our communication with our four-legged friends or are we just making a fool of ourselves in other people’s eyes when we talk that way? A UK study found that it does make sense.

O awesome.club shows, in this post, the reasons why talking to your pet the same way you talk to a baby can help you communicate better with him.

The research was led by dr. Katie Slocombe, from the University of York, in the United Kingdom, and the results were published in the specialized magazine Animal Cognition🇧🇷 The experiment evaluated how 37 dogs respond to stimuli presented by the language of dogs or, in English, Dog Directed Speech 🇧🇷DDS, Discourse Directed at Dogs) and by the “language of adults” (Adult Directed Speech), comparing the effects of each one of them.

When talking to a child, adults tend to communicate (as in the case of “dog talk”) in a different and cute way, known in science as baby language. (Children’s Directed Speech) or baby talk🇧🇷 To some, this may seem like over-indulgence from first-time parents, but some research has shown that talking to children this way can help them better develop their language skills.

From a scientific point of view, the main characteristics of the baby talk are: incisive speech, excessive articulation of words, use of gestures and marking of vowels. These same characteristics are shared by the language of dogs (the aforementioned DDS). The point is that there is not, strictly speaking, a justification for this, since the brain of animals is not configured to understand human language. But the dr. Slocombe explains what happens.

The British researcher’s study sought to assess whether dogs can understand the content of what we say to them or if what they perceive is simply the way we speak. The results suggest that dogs react to a combination of these factors, acoustic and gestural properties and words with relevant content.

Understandably, the animals showed a desire to spend more time with those participants who spoke dog language compared to those who used adult language. With this, for the first time, it was demonstrated that DDS not only makes animals more attentive, but also makes them develop affective preferences for their owners. Talking to dogs the same way you talk to a baby actually helps with communication, reinforcing the bonds of affinity with their owners.

Have you ever wondered why you tend to talk to your pet that way? Tell us in the comments!