Brain scan study reveals dogs attend to word meaning, not just intonation

Image credit: Borbála Ferenczy By guest blogger Sofia Deleniv Imagine if we could capture the words of an angry dog owner holding a chewed-up shoe – “How could you? You terrible dog!” – and digitally alter the tone to sound praising. Would the dog be oblivious to the reprimanding content of the message? I should admit that, until quite recently, I thought that the answer was yes ­– that no matter how chastising the words you used, you could convince a dog that it is being showered in praise, simply by adopting an affectionate tone. But a recent study published in Science indicates that many of us might be vastly underestimating canine listening skills. The findings reveal that dogs do not rely exclusively on intonation when judging the reward value of human speech, but that they also recognise the meanings that we assign to words. Attila Andics at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine patterns of brain activity in 13 specially trained dogs as they listened to their trainer speaking either words of praise or neutral words. The two types of phrase were selected based on their containing words of similar frequency in Hungarian, which allowed the investigators to assume that any distinct effects that praising phrases might have on the brain could be more reasonably attributed to their particular meaning rather than the animals’ greater familiarity with them. Import...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain Comparative guest blogger Language Source Type: blogs