How pets help us feel better

American researchers have developed the AURAL-Pet system to analyze how people communicate with their dogs and cats. The technology recognizes 30 categories of interaction, including commands, praise, and conversations. Scientists plan to investigate how the style of communication with pets affects the psychological state of owners.

Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed the AURAL-Pet system, designed to analyze how people communicate with their dogs and cats in everyday life. The system can recognize 30 different categories of behavior and speech, including commands, questions, praise, negative statements, and the use of nicknames. For development, scientists used 5,072 audio recordings collected via smartphones from 240 participants who were near their pets. Analysis showed that people addressed animals in about 9.2 percent of cases when they were speaking at all. The manner of communication varied greatly: some owners had full conversations with their pets, while others limited themselves to short commands. Researchers emphasize that it is too early to assert a direct link between communication style and mental health. The main goal of the work is to test the system's ability to objectively record interaction. In the future, scientists plan to compare this data with the psychological state of participants.