Animal-Assisted Interventions for School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Animal‑Assisted Interventions for School‑Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta‑Analysis Mirena Dimolareva1 · Thomas J. Dunn1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Research has indicated beneficial effects of Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAIs) for children with Autism. However, there is a dearth of meta-analyses and findings are often contradictory. The current meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of AAIs on social interaction, communication and global Autism symptoms. A total of 1447 studies were returned, of which 16 (n = 489) met the inclusion criteria. The meta-analyses indicated small effect sizes related to improvements in social interaction and communication and reduction in Autism Spectrum Disorder symptoms. Additionally, there was little evidence for a relationship between dosage and effect size. In conclusion, AAIs appear to offer small improvements in social interaction and communication for children with Autism, which may be comparable to activities used in active control conditions. Keywords Animal-assisted interventions · Autism · Children · School-age Recently there has been an upsurge in research concerning the therapeutic benefits of Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAIs). AAIs are sessions with therapeutic, health and/or wellbeing goals which involve the presence of an animal (SCAS 2013). There are different types of AAIs such as Animal-Assisted Therapy (e.g. Animal-Assisted Play Therapy), Animal-Assisted Activities (e.g. therapy animal visits to nursing homes), Animal-Assisted Education (i.e. completing tasks with therapy animals to improve educational outcomes). AAIs can vary in duration and length, from weekly, 1-h sessions for 6 months (Kern et al. 2011), to weekly 1-h sessions for 10 weeks (Gabriels et al. 2012) or twice weekly, 20-min sessions for 8 weeks (O’Haire et al. 2014). AAI sessions can include structured (e.g. how to lead and care for a horse) as well as unstructured components (e.g., free play time with the animals) (e.g. Gabriels et al. 2012; O’Haire et al. 2014). AAI research also differs in terms of design, where some studies use a randomised and/or controlled Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04715-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Mirena Dimolareva [email protected] 1
Psychology Division, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, Lincolnshire LN1 3DY, UK
design (e.g. Becker et al. 2017; Gabriels et al. 2012) compared to others who employ pre-post designs with no control group (e.g. Anderson and Meints 2016). In general, the literature points to positive effects of interacting and engaging with animals, across a range of disorders (e.g., Schuck et al. 2015; Friedmann et al. 1983; Stefanini et al. 2016). However, assessing AAIs’ ‘true’ impact for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has somewhat lagged behind the volume of single-study publications. The evidenc
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