- A study by researchers at the ELTE Department of Ethology in Hungary has revealed that dogs process speech using a consonant bias, similar to human babies learning a language.
- Published in the journal Science, the research team used electroencephalography to measure and compare the brain responses of 20 companion dogs and 20 humans listening to continuous speech streams.
- Brain responses in both species showed significantly stronger synchronisation with the rhythm of words when repeating patterns were formed by consonants rather than vowels.
- A distinct change in electrical brain activity occurred approximately 400 milliseconds after the beginning of a word in both species, indicating the tracking and segmentation of continuous speech into individual words.
- The findings demonstrate that human-like speech processing does not require specialised language abilities or pre-wired human brains, but can instead emerge simply through regular exposure to human speech.
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