Reducing Sex Differences in Children’s Empathy for Animals Through a Training Intervention

A cultural selection analysis of human-dog interactions – A primer

“…On the other hand, dogs are frequently brought into families with the expectation that they will help children learn responsibility and kindness towards other individuals (Irvine & Cilia, 2017). However, these notions have not been consistently supported by research (Angantyr et al, 2016;Daly & Morton, 2003;Patterson-Kane & Piper, 2009), a fact that calls for further investigation, to which behavior analysis could contribute using the selectionist framework here presented.…”

The Association Between Reading and Emotional Development: A Systematic Review

“…A further interesting clarification that emerged from the analysis of the results concerns the reading choices made by the studies that implemented an intervention. We observe the selection of books with multicultural aspects (Glenn, 2012;Gordon, 2017;Slay & Morton, 2020;Tomé -Ferná ndez et al, 2019), and books with relevant emotional content, with a greater frequency for reading with negative emotional contents (Altmann et al, 2012;Angantyr et al, 2016;Iacozza, Costa, & Duñabeitia, 2017;Karniol, 2012). Some studies have chosen specific contents, such as disability (Venegas, 2019), bullying and suicide (Pytash, 2013) and relevant historical events (Chisholm et al, 2017).…”

“…In the School-age sample (see Appendix B), out of a total of 24 articles, 14 studies involved participants in the primary school (e.g. Angantyr, Hansen, Eklund, & Malm, 2016;Beck, Kumschick, Eid, & Klann-Delius, 2012;Brokamp, Houtveen, & van de Grift, 2019), 5 studies enrolled participants in the middle school (e.g. Chisholm, Shelton, & Sheffield, 2017).…”

“…Other research used sessions of individual or shared reading, sometimes based on a single moment (e.g. Angantyr et al, 2016;Chisholm et al, 2017), other times based on several moments limited in time (e.g. Schapira & Aram, 2019).…”

“…Children's literacy assessed in primary school relates to the ability to understand others' emotions (Kumschick et al, 2014). Reading programs based on socio-emotional texts seem to reduce sex differences in empathy expression (Angantyr et al, 2016), while literature circles, reading interventions and reading classes based on multicultural literature were found to increase empathy and theory of mind in primary school (Beck et al, 2012;Gordon, 2017;Kumschick et al, 2014;Lysaker & Tonge, 2013;Tomé -Ferná ndez et al, 2019;Venegas, 2019), with stable effects even after six months by the end of the intervention (Ornaghi, Brockmeier, & Grazzani, 2014). Similar results were found in middle school (Stutler, 2011), while the use of graphic novels elicited empathy and historical empathy (Chisholm et al, 2017).…”