Changes in behavioural synchrony during dog‐assisted therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder and children with Down syndrome

Abstract

Background Dog‐assisted therapy (DAT) is hypothesized to help children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS). Methods The present authors compared synchronous movement patterns of these children (n = 10) and their therapy dogs during the first and last session of a DAT programme, and their post‐therapy changes in emotional and behavioural problems. Results The present authors found a significant increase in synchrony between child and therapy dog over time. Exploratory analyses suggest more synchrony between children with ASD and their therapy dogs, compared to the children with DS. Conclusions This study is the first to test the synchrony hypothesis, shedding light upon a mechanism that may underlie the effect of DAT and how this may be different for children with ASD and DS.

Verbal Interactional Synchronization between Therapist and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder during Dolphin Assisted Therapy: Five Case Studies

“…We first transformed the codes and accompanying times to a time series with a sampling rate of 2 Hz and then applied Cross Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA; see [50,51,52]. CRQA originates from the natural sciences, and it has recently been introduced to the study of human interactions (see e.g., [53,54,55,56,57], and recently also human-animal interactions [58]. This study [58] investigated the course of behavioral synchrony on movement patterns (and the outcome on problem behaviors) of children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with ASD while interacting with a dog.…”

“…CRQA originates from the natural sciences, and it has recently been introduced to the study of human interactions (see e.g., [53,54,55,56,57], and recently also human-animal interactions [58]. This study [58] investigated the course of behavioral synchrony on movement patterns (and the outcome on problem behaviors) of children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with ASD while interacting with a dog. We used CRQA to operationalize the movement synchrony between a dog and child and found an increase in the coupling between child and dog during the final session, which means that the child and dog became mutually attuned in their movements.…”

Positive effects of Dog Assisted Therapy in the Pediatric Population

“…Children suffering from ASD may benefit from the Dog Assisted Therapy. DAT increases self-esteem, social interactions in children with ASD [17,18,19 ] . DAT may change children's behavior by reducing anxiety, anger, emotional outbursts and repetitive behaviors.…”

“…Beside physical defects, the clinical manifestation of the DS are: impaired intellectual development, delays in language skills, behavioral problems like hyperactivity, impulsivity, higher risk of depression or anxiety. [1,18,21] Dog assisted therapy is considered to be effective in reducing behavioral problems, anxiety and hyperactivity. [18] Cerebral palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a non-progressive neurological condition which includes heterogeneous limitation of motor functions.…”

Temporal Synchrony in Autism: A Systematic Review

“…Our quality assessment identified some studies with very small autistic participant samples of n=5 (Griffioen et al, 2020) and n=9 (Fitzpatrick et al, 2016); however, sample sizes of 15 or more were more typical (71.8% of studies). It was previously established that small samples might provide results that insufficiently detect a difference between experimental groups and thus lead to invalid assumptions (Nayak, 2010).…”