ArticleScientific reports2025
Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris).
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
The evolution of human communication likely centred, in part, on shared intuitions about the mapping of sound to meaning. These sound-meaning intuitions, known as sound symbolism, can be seen for example in the bouba-kiki effect, where nonsense words carry inherent meaning about their likely referents (here, rounded vs. angular objects respectively). In our paper we suggest for the first time that sound symbolism can afford successful interspecies communication between humans and animals in certain circumstances. Over four investigations, including replications, we show that humans use sound symbolism significantly and pervasively to attempt to convey meaning to domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), specifically, by exploiting vocal prosody to signal elevation in space. In Study 1 we analysed recordings of amateur dog owners commanding their dogs to move upwards (e.g., "stand") or downwards (e.g., "down"), finding higher mean pitch (fundamental frequency, f
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