Is It Bad To Talk Baby Talk To Your Dog?
May 13, 2018
Finally, a study proving that talking baby talk to your dog is a great way to bond with them. Now you can go tell all those people who make fun of you for talking to your dog like they’re a baby. It is effective. They do understand. What’s more, they like it!
Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech
This kind of baby talk is known as ‘dog speak’. When used with words and phrases your dog understands like, ‘you’re a good dog,’ and ‘wanna go for a walk?’, your dog is more likely to pay attention and respond. Furthermore, they’ll want to hang out with you a whole lot more.
The experiment, led by Dr Katie Slocombe out of the University of York’s Department of Psychology, set out to find if the way we speak to our dogs has any real benefit, in the hopes it would “be useful for pet owners interacting with their dogs, and also for veterinary professionals and rescue workers.” The “type and content of the communication” was important, as the researchers believed it was the key to “social bonding between animals and humans.”
Dr Slocombe said:
A special speech register, known as infant-directed speech, is thought to aid language acquisition and improve the way a human baby bonds with an adult. This form of speech is known to share some similarities with the way in which humans talk to their pet dogs, known as dog-directed speech. ~ Who’s a good boy?! Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech: Animal Cognition; 2018
Clinical studies of this kind have previously measured a dog’s reaction to speech by using voice recordings. For this study, Slocombe and her researchers wanted to see the dog’s reaction during face-to-face encounters with their human counterparts. It was important to see if the dog spent more time with their baby-talking test subjects.
Several control tests were set up to measure what was being said versus how it was said, and whether the speaker used dog-directed speech, non-dog-related words, adult-directed speech and dog-related words.
Phrases like ‘you’re a good dog’, and ‘shall we go for a walk?’, were said using both normal tone and baby talk, together with phrases like ‘I went to the cinema last night’, in regular, adult speech.
It's good to talk baby talk to your dog
It’s no surprise that those humans using baby talk or ‘dog speak’ to communicate with their canine partners with dog-related words triumphed over those speaking in their normal adult voices. Using baby talk and saying the ‘magic words’ gets your dog every time. It’s a phenomenon that’s also been shown to have a profound benefit in bonding with babies. It also helps increase focus and improve learning and development.
Dr Slocombe said:
We found that adult dogs were more likely to want to interact and spend time with the speaker that used dog-directed speech with dog-related content, than they did those that used adult-directed speech with no dog-related content.
So go ahead, make fun of me for talking to my dogs in a baby voice. They love it and what’s more, they listen to me and we become instant friends. It’s magic. You should try it!
by Natalie Secretan
metrodogwalker.com
Photo credit: Skamalas ~ Sophie pays attention