Animal-assisted activity improves social behaviors in psychiatrically hospitalized youth with autism.
A single ten-minute dog visit can immediately boost talking, smiling, and eye contact in autistic kids on a psychiatric unit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers paired six- to eight-year-old kids on a psychiatric unit with a handler and dog for ten minutes. They compared the visit to a toy-play control session.
Each child met the dog twice. Staff scored smiles, words, gestures, and eye contact during both conditions.
What they found
Kids talked, smiled, pointed, and looked at people more during the dog visit than during toy time. The gains showed up right away.
How this fits with other research
Jorgenson et al. (2020) saw mixed results when dog time was used as reinforcement. Only one of five children talked more. The difference: M et al. gave everyone a brief visit; Jorgenson made kids earn the dog time. Free access may work better than contingent access.
Badia et al. (2016) and Peters et al. (2022) found similar social boosts with horses instead of dogs. The animal species seems less important than the calm, structured interaction.
Tiede et al. (2019) and Han et al. (2025) show that naturalistic ABA programs also lift social skills, but those take weeks. A ten-minute dog visit offers a quick, low-cost spark while longer programs build lasting change.
Why it matters
If you work on an inpatient unit, invite a certified therapy dog for brief, scheduled visits. Track smiles, words, and eye contact for five minutes before and after. Use the lift in mood to start a social script or peer conversation. One short visit can give you a window of engagement to practice turn-taking or requesting.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
There is preliminary research suggesting that animal-assisted activities can improve social interactions of children with autism spectrum disorder. This pilot study sought to investigate the benefits of animal-assisted activities with dogs and psychiatrically hospitalized youth with autism spectrum disorder. Participants were recruited from a specialized inpatient psychiatric hospital unit for youth with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. Utilizing a crossover design, participants served as their own control by engaging in two 10-min conditions: an experimental dog and handler interaction (animal-assisted activities) and a novel toy and handler control (control). Of the 142 youth aged 6--8 years screened for participation, 47 completed both conditions. Participants' behavioral data were captured via video and coded using the Observation of Human-Animal Interaction for Research, a tool specifically developed to capture human behavioral interactions in the presence of animals. Overall, social-communication behaviors significantly improved in the animal-assisted activities experimental condition compared to the control condition (p = 0.0001). Specifically, participants in the animal-assisted activities experimental condition displayed more positive emotional facial expressions (p ⩽ 0.0001), talking (p = 0.0408), use of gestures (p = 0.032), and looking at both adults and peers (p ⩽ 0.0001). In addition, a higher frequency of constant motion (p = 0.003) was observed in the animal-assisted activities experimental condition. Results suggest that animal-assisted activities with a dog may promote social-communication behaviors in psychiatrically hospitalized youth with autism spectrum disorder. Given the fact that social and communication behaviors can facilitate treatment engagement for this population, we recommend future studies examine how such improvements can positively affect the psychiatric treatment of this population.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2019 · doi:10.1177/1362361319827411