Pilot Study Investigating the Role of Therapy Dogs in Facilitating Social Interaction among Children with Autism

Ten children with autism, aged 7–10, attended 14 individual sessions of social interaction therapy. A group-comparison design was adopted. Comparing two interventions, matching and random assignment were used to form the experimental group (Animal-Assisted Play Therapy with a therapy dog) and the co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of contemporary psychotherapy 2014-12, Vol.44 (4), p.253-262
Main Authors: Fung, Suk-chun, Leung, Alvin Seung-ming
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autism
Clinical Psychology
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Original Paper
Personality and Social Psychology
Psychiatry
Public Health
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Ten children with autism, aged 7–10, attended 14 individual sessions of social interaction therapy. A group-comparison design was adopted. Comparing two interventions, matching and random assignment were used to form the experimental group (Animal-Assisted Play Therapy with a therapy dog) and the comparison group (an identical play therapy procedure using a doll as the dog surrogate). The within-group results using nonparametric tests showed that verbal social behavior increased significantly in the experimental group. Although the magnitude of this increase was not significantly larger than that in the comparison group, the preliminary findings suggested that the therapy dog had a positive impact on language output. The results are discussed in terms of the role that a therapy dog can fulfill as a “Speech Elicitor” for children with autism.
ISSN:0022-0116
1573-3564
DOI:10.1007/s10879-014-9274-z