Critical Review Of A Therapy Dog Essay

Discussion
The studies examined in this review have all demonstrated the overall benefits of therapy dogs on improving the social behaviours and skills in children with ASD. In particular, positive social behaviours, like increased smiles, eye contact, prosocial behaviour and social initiation were established, whilst, negative behaviours, like aggression, repetitive and obsessive behaviours were shown to decrease for most participants. Also, increased social interaction, communication, motivation to engage and social understanding were demonstrated. However, the effects were shown not to be consistent across participants or settings and a small number of participants were shown to have a smaller benefit or developed negative consequences of therapy dogs, such as, reduced peer interaction and a fixation with the therapy dog. Additionally, there appeared to be no apparent cross cultural effect as results were fairly consistent across studies, and any differences in the results were most likely due to individual differences in the symptoms and severity of ASD for each participant, as it differed across studies.
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The research included in this review covers a wide age range and was conducted in a range of contexts and countries. Most of the studies used a small sample size and they all implemented their sessions and interventions for different lengths of time. All of this makes it difficult to compare and generalise findings across the reviewed studies, as well as, to other studies, making it difficult to identify whether certain differing factors had an influence as well. The tests, activities and methods of measurement were all different across the studies, with some studies taking a quantitative approach while others used a qualitative approach. Therefore, it is difficult to draw conclusive conclusions and fully understand the changes in social behaviour, particularly as some methods were more robust than