Hungarian study finds dogs split human speech into words
Turns out, your dog might be picking up more from your chatter than you think!
A new study from Hungary found that dogs can actually split human speech into words, a skill previously observed primarily in humans with frequent exposure to speech.
Researchers say that regular exposure to speech helps both dogs and humans process language in surprisingly similar ways.
Dogs and humans show consonant bias
The team studied the brain activity of 20 dogs and 20 humans as they listened to streams of jumbled-up speech.
Both groups showed a "consonant bias," meaning their brains reacted more strongly to patterns with lots of consonants.
What's wild is that even shelter and street dogs had this ability, showing it doesn't take fancy training, just some pattern learning, and a bit of listening.
As psychologist and PhD researcher in the group and one of the study's co-first authors Kinga G. Toth put it, "This is the first evidence that a consonant bias can also emerge in the brain of a species other than humans,"