The details of the study are a bit complicated, but here’s a brief description. After being matched for their basic anxiety levels, 68 teens between ages 13 and 17 were placed in either therapy-dog groups or a no-dog control group. All of the subjects were then given a series of tasks that psychologists use to induce stress in kids—the Trier Social Stress Task for Children.
Then the stressful part of the study began. It lasted 15 minutes. First, the subjects were given five minutes to prepare a short speech on an aspect of history. They then had five minutes to give their speech. Immediately after the speech, they had to complete a mental arithmetic task in which they serially subtracted either 11 or 17 backward from 100. At the end of the session, the teens had a 30-minute recovery period when they could watch a documentary film on an iPad.
The researchers used three measures to assess changes in anxiety during the session. The measures were taken six times during the stages of the Social Stress Task.was assessed by having the subjects rate how they were feeling using six words on a three-point scale .was assessed by wristband sensors that measured the subjects’ heart rate and skin electrical conductivity, a measure of sweating.was measured by counting the number of errors the subjects made on the mental arithmetic test.
Their second hypothesis was that subjects who got to touch their therapy dog would have lower anxiety and stress scores than the participants who could talk to their therapy dog but not physically interact with it.As the researchers expected, the Social Stress Task was successful in stressing out the teens.
In short, interacting with a therapy dog was no more effective at reducing short-term anxiety in teens than sitting next to a stuffed toy dog.As I have described in previous posts, the media hype about the ability of animals to cure human ills does not match up to actual research findings. (See
My therapeutic goldfish when I tell him about my day.
When I went to school when I was little, dogs attacked us sometimes on the road. my friends would climb trees in fear, I would not climb trees, dogs would come and stand in front of me, I was never afraid of animals.
Teens....I’m not sure what would be efficacious with hormones and other bodily signals in chaotic flux.
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