Victoria Ratcliffe of the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, studies whether dogs show similar biases in response to the information transmitted in human speech. Check out her research:

The researchers worked with 250 dogs of various breeds. The dogs listened to speakers that were alternately placed on both sides of their heads. So when a dog listened to sounds coming from its right side, he turned to his left proving that the left hemisphere of his brain plays a role in processing that sound. “The input from each ear is mainly transmitted to the opposite hemisphere of the brain,” says Ratcliffe. “If one hemisphere is more specialized in processing certain information in the sound, then that information is perceived as coming from the opposite ear.”

The sounds the dogs heard were from their pet parents saying simple commands that were stripped of emotion. Other times the words were garbled and were difficult to understand. These garbled words, however, had strong emotional tones.

The dogs turned to the right when they listened to words without emotions. The left hemisphere of our brain processes speech — or the meaning of the words without emotion. When the dogs turned their heads to the left, it was the right hemisphere of the brain that processed the content. That is when they understood the emotional tone behind those words.

To find out what a dog does when he hears static go over to Dogtime. The results may surprise you!

We really would like our dogs to understand what we say and experts confirm that they are paying attention. They know who we are, how we say things, and what we say! Maybe they don’t understand everything we say but they sure seem to try and we love that they listen!