Do your dogs understand what you say to them?

Your dog may not fully understand what you are saying, but he will listen and pay attention similar to the way humans do. The researchers found that, much like people, dogs react to the emotional tone of our voices as well as the things we say to them.

According to the study, canines and humans both respond to vocalizations, or what is being said, as well as the emotional tone that is expressed during speech, or how it is being uttered.

David Reby, one of the study’s supervisors noted, “This is particularly interesting because our results suggest that the processing of speech components in the dog’s brain is divided between the two hemispheres in a way that is actually very similar to the way it is separated in the human brain.”

The majority of verbal processing—the what we say part—occurs in the left hemisphere of the brain in humans. Speech using exaggerated, positive vocal inflection — the how we say it part — is processed in the right hemisphere.

An talent that was formerly thought to be exclusive to humans was shown by the study’s canines to listen in the same way. When confronted with foreign language, their attention transferred from the linguistic to the emotional element.

In the study, dogs showed that they listen the same way — an ability that was once believed to be unique to humans. When researchers use unfamiliar language, dogs focus shifted from linguistic content to emotional content.

Like humans, when you’re listening to unfamiliar language, you shift your focus to nonverbal cues like intonation and inflection to try to figure out clues about what you are hearing. Our dogs do the same thing when they hear unfamiliar speech.

In the second study, researchers tried tricking dogs by saying out-of-context words using positive, praising intonations (for instance, they replaced a praise-worthy “good boy!” with the word “not really”). Brain scans taken during the study showed the dogs were not fooled. Researchers could tell because the left hemisphere of the brain was not activated. The findings contradict the assumption that dogs only understand the tone of our voices and have no idea what our words mean.

This is good news for dog lovers who enjoy talking to their four-legged friends. Your dog may not understand everything what you say, but he is focused on both the content of conversation and the underlying emotional tone. So, keep talking to your dog. Keen hearing acuity and the ability to process language similar to humans makes your dog an ideal listener and points to one reason why dogs are, indeed, our best friends!