Vocal communication between humans and animals

Root-Gutteridge, Holly, Massenet, Mathilde, Fournier, Floriane, Korzeniowska, Anna, Pisanski, Katarzyna and Reby, David (2025) Vocal communication between humans and animals. In, Reference Module in Life Sciences. Elsevier. (doi:10.1016/B978-0-443-29068-8.00079-9).

Abstract

In this article, we review the scientific literature examining vocal communication between humans and other animals, with a focus on dog-human interactions, as these have recently received considerable attention from scientists.
We discuss how vocal signals are produced in human and non-human mammals, arguing that vocal communication between different mammalian species is facilitated by commonalities in the production and perception of sound signals. Production mechanisms are described in the context of source-filter theory, and perceptual abilities in the context of motivational-structural rules.
We then review the extent to which humans perceive and use the information content of animal vocal signals, finding that familiarity and phylogenetic relatedness are potential features for shared perception, but that cross-species communication appears possible even between unfamiliar and distantly related species. Domestication may have furthermore artificially selected for vocal signals that exploit human perceptual biases, thereby promoting cooperation between domesticated species and humans.
Finally, we discuss animals’ abilities to assess information from both the nonverbal and verbal dimensions of human speech, also reviewing recent research on pet-directed speech, a specific voice register used by human speakers when addressing their pets. We report that many animals can decode information from human vocal signals including speaker traits, emotional and motivational states, and even phonemic or linguistic content.

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Contributors

Author: Anna Korzeniowska

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