Dogs Understand Us Better When We Speak Slowly, Study Finds

You’ve probably already noticed that there are some messages your dog gets loud and clear, while others seem to go right over their perfect little heads. They might stare at you blankly during your breathless explanation of the plot of The Bear, but they seem to know exactly who is such a good doggie. Now, scientists are getting to the bottom of how we can better communicate with our dogs. A new study published in PLOS Biology found that dogs understand slow speech better than fast speech — meaning the next time you’re chatting with your pup, you might want to channel Christopher Walken rather than Katharine Hepburn.

How dog and human speech patterns differ

Researchers analyzed the vocal sequences of 30 dogs — all their barks, growls, howls, snarls, and whines. They also analyzed the speech patterns of 27 humans speaking to other humans across five languages, plus 22 humans speaking to dogs across five languages. They found that dogs vocalize more slowly than humans; while humans speak about four syllables per second, dogs vocalize at a rate of about two sounds per second.

Related article

Dog and Human Brains Sync When They Stare Into Each Other’s Eyes, New Study Finds

You and your pup are on the same wavelength—seriously.

They also found that when speaking to dogs, humans tended to speak at a slower rate than when speaking to humans — but still a faster rate than when dogs speak to each other. On average, people lower their speech rate to about three syllables per second when addressing pups.

How dogs best understand speech

The researchers then performed EEGs on dogs and humans to measure their neural activity. They found that dogs best process delta rhythms, which relate to the long, slow rhythms in speech like intonation and pauses. Humans, though, prioritize processing theta rhythms — the faster parts of speech, like individual syllables.

Dogs are not able to process the quick, intricate parts of our sentences, but they can get the gist when we take it slow. This means that our instinct to slow down our speech when we’re talking to our pups is right, but we could even take it one notch further. The researchers hope that this knowledge can help promote stronger bonds between people and dogs. After all, our dogs are ready to listen — they just want us to take our time.