The effects of the presence of a dog on the social interactions between children with developmental disabilities and their teacher were analyzed in this study. We examined whether the presentation of a dog would improve the social interactions of three children with developmental disabilities. A baseline condition consisting of the child and teacher in the presence of three toys, one of which was a toy dog was followed by an intervention in which a real dog was added to the sessions. A multiple baseline design across participants was employed to assess experimental changes in interactions during the intervention condition.
All participants demonstrated an increase in overall positive initiated behaviors (verbal and non-verbal), positive initiated interactions toward the teacher (verbal and non-verbal) and positive initiated interactions toward the dog (verbal and non-verbal). The children also showed an overall decrease in negative initiated behaviors (verbal and nonverbal). Two of the three participants demonstrated a decrease in negative initiated interactions toward their teacher (verbal and non-verbal), while with one participant there was a slight increase in negative non-verbal interactions toward the teacher. All three children showed slight increases in negative initiated non-verbal interactions with the dog while negative initiated verbal interactions toward the dog remained the same.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USF/oai:scholarcommons.usf.edu:etd-1901 |
| Date | 04 March 2005 |
| Creators | Walters, Stephanie |
| Publisher | Scholar Commons |
| Source Sets | University of South Flordia |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Graduate Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | default |
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