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Research from: L.E.A.D. The aim of the LEAD study was to find out if dog interventions in schools, could help children’s learning, reduce their stress levels and support their wellbeing.
The LEAD research team are from
Universities in the UK and Belgium:
Prof. Kerstin Meints
Dr Mirena Dimolareva
Dr. Victoria Brelsford
Dr. Elise Rowan
Dr. Kyla Pennington
Dr. Susan Chipchase
Dr. Susan Chipchase
Dr. Laëtitia Maréchal
Dr. Laëtitia Maréchal
Dr. Hannah Wright
Dr. Hannah Wright
Funded by: The Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition. Led by Dr. Nancy Gee
Their mission: "improve pets' lives by understanding their needs through science."
"These findings provide crucial evidence that dog interventions can successfully reduce stress levels in school children, with important implications for AAI implementation, learning and wellbeing."
Dog intervention helps children with:
stress levels
cognition
language
behaviour at home
self-esteem
anxiety
Lincoln Education Assistance with Dogs (LEAD)
The aim of the LEAD study was to find out if dog interventions in schools could help children’s learning, reduce their stress levels and support their wellbeing. It was a longitudinal project.
What the project measured .
We took socio-emotional, physiological, cognitive and language measures. We measured children’s self-esteem and anxiety levels, their cognitive and language abilities and their stress levels (e.g. by collecting saliva from the children for cortisol analysis before and after intervention). Children were allocated to either a relaxation intervention, dog intervention or control group. Interventions took place for 20 minutes, twice per week, over a 4-week period. Control group children attended school lessons as normal. All 3 groups are important – the control group is important as this group shows us how children’s normal learning progresses, so we can compare children in this group to our other 2 groups. All children saw the dogs before intervention and learnt about safe behaviour with dogs and dog body language, so nobody was left out.
After the 4 weeks, children took part again in the games described above, so we could see their progress. We did this also after 6-weeks, 6-months and 1 year to see if any of the interventions have long-lasting effects. We did this individually and in small groups.
Findings:
Dog intervention helps children in mainstream schools with:
• cognition (spatial ability, executive functioning – this is for example, paying attention, self-monitoring, etc.)
• language (sentence comprehension)
Dog intervention helps children in special needs schools with:
• cognition (picture similarity)
• language comprehension.
Dog intervention helps children in special needs schools, particularly those with higher ability with:
• cognition (pattern construction, matrices)
• language comprehension and production
• behaviour at home
• self-esteem
• anxiety
Importantly, all children benefit from dog intervention regarding stress levels:
• Mainstream schools: No increase in cortisol
• Children with SEN: Decrease in cortisol
Science backs the fact that:
Dog mentoring is S.M.A.R.T.
It is much more than Smiles, Relaxation and Petting...
Dogs reduce stress levels in school children.
This study is the first randomized controlled trial to investigate dog-assisted interventions as a mediator of stress in school children with and without special educational needs (SEN) over the school term. Interventions were carried out individually and in small groups twice a week for 20 minutes over the course of 4 weeks. We compared physiological changes in salivary cortisol in a dog intervention group with a relaxation intervention group and a no treatment control group. We compared cortisol level means before and after the 4 weeks of interventions in all children as well as acute cortisol in mainstream school children.
Dog interventions lead to significantly lower stress in children with and without special educational needs compared to their peers in relaxation or no treatment control groups.
In neurotypical children, those in the dog interventions showed no baseline stress level increases over the school term. In addition, acute cortisol levels evidenced significant stress reduction following the interventions.
In contrast, the no treatment control group showed significant rises in baseline cortisol levels from beginning to end of school term. Increases also occurred in the relaxation intervention group.
Children with SEN showed significantly decreased cortisol levels after dog group interventions. No changes occurred in the relaxation or no treatment control groups.
Click on this link for the full research paper:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269333
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