Animal-Assisted Activities

1. Summary
Marguerite O’Haire, Samantha McKenzie, Sandra McCune, and Virginia Slaughter conducted a research study that tested the effects of Animal-Assisted Activities on children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The objective of their study was to see how Animal-Assisted Activities effect the social functioning of their participants. Their research took place in kindergarten through seventh grade classrooms. In all, 41 classrooms were used and they were from 15 different schools. The children were both male and female and they were from five to twelve years old. The parents of the participants all agreed to let their children take place in this study. The researchers got the results they were expecting to get.
2. Methods and subjects
The researchers
The first session consisted of an introductory lesson. The person directing the lesson was not the teacher, it was a facilitator brought in by the researchers. This person did not have any background in animal care. They did this to ensure that if this study was repeated, it could be done by a teacher or a parent. It was a 15 minute lesson that taught the children how to care for the guinea pig. During the following lessons, they were able to hold and feed the guinea pig. The animals would be placed in a towel and then put into the children’s arms or on their laps. When they fed the guinea pigs, the students would prepare fruits and vegetables for the animal and then they would be able to hand feed it. The materials for this part were grass or hay, fruits or vegetables, a cutting board, and a plastic knife. Some other things that happened during the lessons were flood time. This was a time for the guinea pig to roam freely on the floor on a blanket or a towel. The children would sit in a circle and the animals would be in the center of them. Some lessons also consisted of visual art. This is a time in which the children were able to draw or take pictures of the animals. Health monitoring was another part of a few of their lessons. They learned how to weigh and measure the animals. Participants also learned how to record the animals’ physical and behavioral characteristics. They had a
They measured their results in two ways. The teachers filled out a report and the parents also filled out a report. The Pervasive Developmental Disorder Behavior Inventory (PDDBI) was used to measure outcomes of the participants. There is a parent version and a teacher version. The original versions of each are well over 150 items. In order to save time, and in hopes that it would actually get completed, researchers shortened the teacher version to 48 items and the parent version to 52 items. Another test that was used was the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS). It also had a teacher version and a parent version. This specific rating system was designed for elementary school teachers and parents of elementary school goers. It was used to assess skills in all the children whether they have been diagnosed with Autism or not. The assessments were given to teachers and parents at the same time. The waitlist group was given these assessments three times, and the non-waitlist group was given them