Imitation-based Dog Assisted Intervention, for Children With Developmental Disabilities.

Overview

This R21 application will provide a multidisciplinary One Health approach to DAID physical activity intervention for adolescents with developmental disabilities and their family dog. The novel intervention approach includes the use of the family dog in an established dog training protocol, focused on physical activity and aimed at improving physical activity, quality of life and social wellbeing for children with and without developmental disabilities. Recent pilot work has revealed physical and social-emotional improvements in children with developmental disabilities following an animal assisted intervention. There has been relatively limited research focused on the physical activity of adolescents with developmental disabilities and there remains a critical need to develop strategies that will encourage an active lifestyle for adolescents with and without developmental disabilities. Animal assisted therapy has known positive impacts on morale and is also known to reduce depressive psychological symptoms for children and adults. Yet, traditional 'service dogs' are prohibitively expensive for many families. Dog ownership alone is known to improve health-related physical activity. Thus, a critical need exists to create physical activity interventions that are easily accessible and provide manageable home-based physical activity adherence, but that are less expensive than traditional service dogs. To achieve these goals the investigators of this project have developed the following specific aims: 1) To develop and evaluate a novel DAID dog training program to promote physical activity in children with and without developmental disabilities; 2) To determine what impact participation in a DAID dog-training program has on the child's quality of life, feelings of social wellbeing and the child-dog relationship. The long term goal of this research is to improve the lives of adolescents with and without developmental disabilities. This research supports the One Health initiative and brings together aspects of improving health related to human and animal development.

Several publications have demonstrated the extent of physical activity deficits in adolescent children with DD, however very few interventions have targeted this health disparity. Not only do significant disparities exist when children with DD are compared to their peers without disabilities, but without intervention, physical activity behaviors in children with DD further decline with age. The investigators, have successfully worked together on animal assisted interventions, ultimately focused on promoting physical activity in children with disabilities. Preliminary data strongly support the conclusion that physical activity, quality of life and social wellbeing improves with a family-dog-assisted intervention. While dog-assisted interventions have become increasingly popular across applied settings, the need for further empirical evaluation is clear. Given the rapid growth of scientific knowledge in the areas of developmental disabilities, human-animal interactions and canine behavior in recent years, the development and empirical evaluation of new animal assisted intervention programs built on a solid theoretical foundation and targeted to the needs of children with DD is especially critical. In addition to the development of this intervention, we will employ an experimental design to conduct within- and between-group evaluations that will be used to assess the efficacy of the proposed DAID intervention, as well as its relative value when compared with a traditional dog walking intervention and waitlist control (true control). To further strengthen our approach, the investigators will use a combination of objective validated physical (physical activity accelerometers), self-report (Quality of Life, Dog Care Responsibility Inventory, and Pet Relationship \& Friendship Scales) and behavioral measures (Child-dog/Dog-child proximity seeking, sociability and attachment) to evaluate program outcomes.