Dog moms and dads: Don’t let your friends and family mock you for using a baby voice when you talk to your pup. A new study suggests that using high-pitched “dog speak” to communicate with a dog improves its attention and may help humans socially bond with their pets. Researchers at York University in the U.K. wanted to test whether using “dog-directed,” high-pitched speech facilitates understanding for dogs like baby talk does for babies. “Obviously we know that dogs can’t learn to talk, so we wanted to know whether dog-speak also has a function for dogs, or whether it is simply something we tend to use with our pets in a culture where we think of dogs as part of the family, like fur-babies,” lead author Alex Benjamin told HuffPost, before noting ― as any proud dog mom would ― that you can follow her fur-baby Cooper on Instagram. Previous research on dog communication suggested that the high-pitched voice worked wonders with puppies, but made little difference with grown dogs.

Source: Huffington Post April 09, 2018 12:56 UTC