Preschoolers Make Fewer Errors on an Object Categorization Task in the Presence of a Dog

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that the presence of a dog can positively impact the speed at which preschoolers perform motor skills tasks and also their ability to adhere to instructions. The current study focused on the execution of a cognitive task—object categorization—by developmentally delayed and typical preschool children in the presence of a real dog, a stuffed dog, or a human. The real dog involved in this study was a Miniature Poodle. The children (n = 12) were asked to complete a match-to-sample task in which they had to choose a picture of an object that “goes with” another. Three categories of object exemplars were used: taxonomic, thematic, and irrelevant. The presence of the real dog resulted in significantly fewer irrelevant choices than either the stuffed dog or the human conditions. Additionally, results in this experiment were consistent with previous research, showing a developmental shift where younger children were more likely to make taxonomic than thematic choices, with the reverse true of the older children. These results indicate that the presence of the real dog does not appear to alter typical performance patterns seen in object categorization, but the fact that fewer errors were made in the presence of the dog indicates that the presence of the dog does have a positive impact on performance of this cognitive task. The authors discuss several possible explanations for this outcome.     

Preschoolers Categorize Animate Objects Better in the Presence of a Dog

ABSTRACT

The current study was designed to examine whether preschool children categorize picture stimuli differentially in the presence of a real dog compared with a stuffed dog or a human. Seventeen preschool children (age in months; M = 51.67, SD = 8.06), both Typical and those with a developmental delay (“Identified”), were asked to categorize Animate and Inanimate objects into two environments (Farm and Ocean) in each of three Collaborator conditions (Real Dog, Stuffed Dog, and Human). As predicted, there was a main effect of animation: the children more accurately categorized Animate (e.g., cow) exemplars than Inanimate ones (e.g., tractor). Additionally, the Animation variable interacted with Collaborator, such that in the presence of the real dog the impact of animation was significant, but this effect was not significant in the presence of the stuffed dog or human. This result indicates that the presence of the real dog served as a highly salient stimulus which encouraged the children to focus more of their attention on other animate objects in the list. This result provides additional evidence that the presence of a dog helps preschool children to restrict their attention to the demands of the task. This is a new and interesting finding that indicates that the presence of a real dog does have an impact on cognitive task performance.     

Heart Rate Variability During a Working Memory Task: Does Touching a Dog or Person Affect the Response?

The presence of a dog has been associated with reduced responses to stressors in several, but not all, previous studies. The presence of a dog has also been related to improved performance on some cognitive tasks. The current study was designed to evaluate the effect of touching a dog on stress responses to a working memory task (WMT). Heart rate variability (HRV) responses to a WMT while touching a dog were compared with responses while touching a stuffed dog and a person. HRV was recorded while 53 university students aged 18 to 41 years sat on the floor next to a randomly assigned co-participant (real dog, stuffed dog, or human) and listened to a reading before and after completing a WMT. This procedure was repeated with the two other co-participants, in a randomized block order. All participants wore an HRV monitor and placed their non-dominant hand on the co-participant throughout the appropriate phase. The WMT involved pointing to increasingly complicated sequences of geometric shapes until the participant failed three times at one level. Linear mixed models analysis for nested data revealed that the memory task was stressful, with parasympathetic nervous system arousal significantly lower during the memory task than the preor post-memory listening tasks (rMSSD: ps < 0.001, = 0.023; high frequency: ps < 0.001, = 0.001). Neither of the measures differed significantly among the three conditions. There also were no significant interactions, indicating that the stress response to the memory task did not differ when the participants were touching the three different co-participants. Touching a dog did not reduce arousal in response to a stressful memory task. This research suggests that a dog may not be effective at reducing stress responses to this type of stressor. Another possibility is that the presence of a dog is more effective than touching a dog at reducing stress responses. Further investigation will be required to evaluate these possibilities.     

The Role of Therapy Dogs in Speed and Accuracy to Complete Motor Skills Tasks for Preschool Children

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the presence of a therapy dog would affect the performance of a set of gross motor skills tasks for a mixed group of language-impaired and typical preschool children. The 14 children in the group were between four and six years old (four female and ten male); the two dogs were Miniature Poodles. The design was a two-way mixed model factorial, where a series of 10 gross motor skills tasks (e.g., long jump, high jump—labeled Type of Task) performed by the children served as one variable, and the presence or absence of the therapy dog (labeled Dog Presence) served as the other variable. In the dog-present conditions, the dog either performed the task immediately prior to, or at the same time as, the child. Time to complete each task and the accuracy of task performance as determined by a rating scale were determined from a review of experiment videotapes. The main effect of Dog Presence was significant (F_(1,36) = 7.471, p < 0.05, R² = 0.17). As predicted, the children completed the tasks faster when the dog was present (M = 10.88 s,SD = 9.84) than when the dog was absent (M = 13.86 s,SD = 12.64), but this effect was not present in the ratings data. This indicates that the presence of a therapy dog served as an effective motivator for the children, who performed faster, but without compromising accuracy, in all tasks but one. The interaction between dog presence and type of task was also significant (F_(9,71) = 3.67, p < 0.05, R² = 0.32) in the ratings data, indicating that the presence of the dog increased performance accuracy in some types of tasks, while decreasing it in others. Based on these results and the strong connection between motor skills and language development, the authors recommend a role for therapy dogs in speech and language development programs for preschool children.     

Augmented Reality for the Assessment of Children's Spatial Memory in Real Settings

Short-term memory can be defined as the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active state for a short period of time. Although some instruments have been developed to study spatial short-term memory in real environments, there are no instruments that are specifically designed to assess visuospatial short-term memory in an attractive way to children. In this paper, we present the ARSM (Augmented Reality Spatial Memory) task, the first Augmented Reality task that involves a user''s movement to assess spatial short-term memory in healthy children. The experimental procedure of the ARSM task was designed to assess the children''s skill to retain visuospatial information. They were individually asked to remember the real place where augmented reality objects were located. The children (N = 76) were divided into two groups: preschool (5–6 year olds) and primary school (7–8 year olds). We found a significant improvement in ARSM task performance in the older group. The correlations between scores for the ARSM task and traditional procedures were significant. These traditional procedures were the Dot Matrix subtest for the assessment of visuospatial short-term memory of the computerized AWMA-2 battery and a parent''s questionnaire about a child''s everyday spatial memory. Hence, we suggest that the ARSM task has high verisimilitude with spatial short-term memory skills in real life. In addition, we evaluated the ARSM task''s usability and perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the younger children were more satisfied with the ARSM task. This novel instrument could be useful in detecting visuospatial short-term difficulties that affect specific developmental navigational disorders and/or school academic achievement.     

Behavioral and Self-report Measures Influencing Children's Reported Attachment to Their Dog

Despite the prevalence of dogs as family pets and increased scientific interest in canine behavior, few studies have investigated charac- teristics of the child or dog that influence the child–dog relationship. In the present study, we explored how behavioral and some self-report measures influence a child's reported attachment to their dog, as assessed by the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS). We tested specifically whether children (n = 99; mean age = 10.25 years, SD = 1.31) reported stronger attachment to dogs that were perceived as being more supportive (mea- sured by a modified version of the Network of Relationships Inventory), that were more successful in following the child's pointing gesture in a standard two-object choice test, or that solicited more petting in a sociability assess- ment. In addition, we assessed whether children's attachment security to their parent and being responsible for the care of their dog influenced re- ported attachment to the dog. Overall, perceived support provided by the dog was highly predictive of all subscales of the LAPS. The dog's success in following the child's pointing gestures and lower rates of petting during the sociability assessment were associated with higher ratings on the General Attachment subscale of the LAPS, but not on the other subscales. Caring for the dog did not predict the child's reported attachment to the dog, but did predict the dog's behavior on the point-following task and petting during the sociability task. If the child cared for the dog, the dog was more likely to be successful on the pointing task and more likely to be petted. These results indicate a dyadic relationship in which the child's care for the dog is associ- ated with the dog's behavior on the behavioral tasks, which in turn is related to the child's reported attachment to their dog. The direction of influence and nature of this dyad will be a fruitful area for future research.     

Effect of Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation on Gait in Parkinsonian Patients with and without Freezing of Gait

Freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson''s disease (PD) rises in prevalence when the effect of medications decays. It is known that auditory rhythmic stimulation improves gait in patients without FOG (PD-FOG), but its putative effect on patients with FOG (PD+FOG) at the end of dose has not been evaluated yet. This work evaluates the effect of auditory rhythmic stimulation on PD+FOG at the end of dose. 10 PD+FOG and 9 PD-FOG patients both at the end of dose periods, and 10 healthy controls were asked to perform several walking tasks. Tasks were performed in the presence and absence of auditory sensory stimulation. All PD+FOG suffered FOG during the task. The presence of auditory rhythmic stimulation (10% above preferred walking cadence) led PD+FOG to significantly reduce FOG. Velocity and cadence were increased, and turn time reduced in all groups. We conclude that auditory stimulation at the frequency proposed may be useful to avoid freezing episodes in PD+FOG.     

Discussing Truth and Lies in Interviews With Children: Whether,Why, and How?

Two studies examined discussions of truth and lying during interviews with children. In Study 1, truth-lie discussions (TLDs) during 132 actual sexual abuse interviews were analyzed, focusing on the types of questions asked and their developmental appropriateness. TLDs, which were fairly common for all ages of children interviewed, typically involved asking children closed-ended questions and did not differ in quality or form by age of child interviewed. Study 2 compared the typical TLDs (found in Study 1) to either no discussion or a more elaborate discussion in their effects on preschoolers' (n = 67) reports of an interactive event. Children given the extended TLD were significantly more accurate than those questioned following a typical or no TLD. The results suggest that discussing truth and lying with young children is effective only if the discussion is more elaborate than those typically conducted in forensic interviews.     

Preschoolers' Dot Enumeration Abilities Are Markers of Their Arithmetic Competence

The abilities to enumerate small sets of items (e.g., dots) and to compare magnitudes are claimed to be indexes of core numerical competences that scaffold early math development. Insofar as this is correct, these abilities may be diagnostic markers of math competence in preschoolers. However, unlike magnitude comparison abilities, little research has examined preschoolers'' ability to enumerate small sets, or its significance for emerging math abilities; which is surprising since dot enumeration is a marker of school-aged children''s math competence. It is nevertheless possible that general cognitive functions (working memory, response inhibition in particular) are associated with preschoolers'' math abilities and underlie nascent dot enumeration abilities. We investigated whether preschoolers'' dot enumeration abilities predict their non-verbal arithmetic ability, over and above the influence of working memory and response inhibition. Two measures of dot enumeration ability were examined—inverse efficiency and paradigm specific (response time profiles) measures—to determine which has the better diagnostic utility as a marker of math competence. Seventy-eight 42-to-57 month-olds completed dot enumeration, working memory, response inhibition, and non-verbal addition and subtraction tasks. Dot enumeration efficiency predicted arithmetic ability over and above the influence of general cognitive functions. While dot enumeration efficiency was a better predictor of arithmetic ability than paradigm specific response time profiles; the response time profile displaying the smallest subitizing range and steepest subitizing slope, also displayed poor addition abilities, suggesting a weak subitizing profile may have diagnostic significance in preschoolers. Overall, the findings support the claim that dot enumeration abilities and general cognitive functions are markers of preschoolers'' math ability.     

Time-of-day effects on cognition in preadolescents: a trails study

Cognitive performance fluctuates during the day due to diurnal variations in alertness level. This study examined: (1) whether cognitive performance in school-aged children is affected by time-of-day; (2) which functional domains are particularly vulnerable to time-of-day effects; and (3) whether the effects are more pronounced for cognitively more demanding tasks or task conditions. Children, aged 10-12 yrs, were randomly assigned to a test session starting either at 08:30 (n?=?802), 10:00 (n?=?713), or 13:00?h (n?=?652). Speed and accuracy of information processing were evaluated by tasks that assess input-related cognitive processes (e.g., stimulus encoding), central cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, sustained attention), and output-related processes (e.g., response organization) using the Amsterdam Neuropsychological Tasks program. Time-of-day effects in children were identified in specific neurocognitive domains, such as visuospatial processing and working memory, but only under cognitively more demanding task conditions. Sustained attention showed a speed-accuracy tradeoff with increased slowness and lapses in the early morning, but with better feedback responsiveness and perceptual sensitivity than in the early afternoon. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction of time-on-task with time-of-day for tempo, with the afternoon group increasing in tempo with time-on-task, and the early-morning group first showing a slowing of tempo with time-on-task, followed at the end of the task by a speed increase towards the initial levels. To conclude, the authors found time-of-day effects in preadolescents, which were confined to cognitively more demanding tasks tapping input-related and central cognitive processes.     

Book Review

ABSTRACT

Previous studies conducted in the United States and Venezuela have demonstrated that people can correctly match portraits of unknown purebred dogs with their owners at statistically significant levels, suggesting that the popular belief in dog–owner physical resemblance is empirically valid. We investigated the perceived physical resemblance of dog–owner pairs in Japan, where the owners are racially more homogenous than in the countries in which the previous studies were conducted. In experiment 1, the matching performance by naïve judges was statistically significant, and a supplementary test suggested that perceived dog–owner physical resemblance plays a critical role in this. Experiment 2 presented a new procedure to test the perceived dog–owner physical resemblance and demonstrated that two-thirds of the judges selected a set of 20 real dog–owner pairs over a set of 20 fake dog–owner pairs, irrespective of whether it was an ownership-guessing task or a resemblance-based choice task. The ability to match correct dog–owner pairs (experiment 1) and the sensitivity to differentiate between real and fake dog–owner pairs (experiment 2) were not unique to the characteristics of the judges (e.g., whether or not they were dog lovers) because the task performance was independent of any measured judge-related factor. These results, taken together, provide another piece of positive evidence for the popular belief that there is a physical resemblance between dogs and their owners. Furthermore, the demonstration of dog–owner physical resemblance with racially homogeneous owner samples supports the generality and robustness of this phenomenon. The mechanism underlying this phenomenon (i.e., owners' selection of dogs that look like themselves or the convergence of appearance over time), however, remains to be elucidated by future studies.     

Interpretation of Dog Behavior by Children and Young Adults

This study investigates people's ability to interpret dog behavior. Inability to interpret dog behavior correctly may be a factor contributing to young children's higher likelihood of being bitten by dogs. Children (4- to 10-year-olds) and adults (total n = 550) watched videos of dogs displaying friendly, aggressive, and fearful behavior. They were asked to interpret the dogs' behaviors and to describe which features they had attended to in making their decision. Four- and 6-year-old children were unable to identify fearful dogs, while participants in all age groups were capable of identifying friendly and aggressive behavior (p < 0.001). Misinterpretations of fearful behavior were significantly associated with reports of attending to the dog's face rather than other features (χ² = 80.2, df = 1, p < 0.001). Four-year-olds were particularly likely to report looking at the dog's face and together with 6-year-olds they focused more on one feature rather than multiple features in order to make their decisions. The results show that younger children are less good at interpreting dog behavior, and that they are particularly poor at recognizing fear in dogs, while aggression is the most readily recognized behavior. Children's lower ability to interpret dog behavior seems to be due to the features they focus on. Younger children appear to focus on the dogs' most salient features and not the features that would allow them to correctly interpret the dogs' behavior. For example, 4- and 6-year-olds tended to report attending to the fearful dog's face rather than its tail and general posture. The results suggest it would be beneficial to include information about how to interpret dog behavior in dog-bite prevention programs.     

Prospective and retrospective time estimates of children: a comparison based on ecological tasks

Children's time estimation literature lacks of studies comparing prospective and retrospective time estimates of long lasting ecological tasks, i.e. tasks reflecting children's daily activities. In the present study, children were asked to estimate prospectively or retrospectively how much time they played a video game or read a magazine. Regardless of the task, the results revealed that prospective time estimates were longer than the retrospective ones. Also, time estimates of the video game task were longer, less accurate and more variable than those of the reading task. The results are discussed in the light of the current literature about time estimation of long lasting ecological tasks.     

TIME-OF-DAY EFFECTS ON COGNITION IN PREADOLESCENTS: A TRAILS STUDY

Cognitive performance fluctuates during the day due to diurnal variations in alertness level. This study examined: (1) whether cognitive performance in school-aged children is affected by time-of-day; (2) which functional domains are particularly vulnerable to time-of-day effects; and (3) whether the effects are more pronounced for cognitively more demanding tasks or task conditions. Children, aged 10–12 yrs, were randomly assigned to a test session starting either at 08:30 (n?=?802), 10:00 (n?=?713), or 13:00?h (n?=?652). Speed and accuracy of information processing were evaluated by tasks that assess input-related cognitive processes (e.g., stimulus encoding), central cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, sustained attention), and output-related processes (e.g., response organization) using the Amsterdam Neuropsychological Tasks program. Time-of-day effects in children were identified in specific neurocognitive domains, such as visuospatial processing and working memory, but only under cognitively more demanding task conditions. Sustained attention showed a speed-accuracy tradeoff with increased slowness and lapses in the early morning, but with better feedback responsiveness and perceptual sensitivity than in the early afternoon. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction of time-on-task with time-of-day for tempo, with the afternoon group increasing in tempo with time-on-task, and the early-morning group first showing a slowing of tempo with time-on-task, followed at the end of the task by a speed increase towards the initial levels. To conclude, the authors found time-of-day effects in preadolescents, which were confined to cognitively more demanding tasks tapping input-related and central cognitive processes. (Author correspondence: kbheijden@fsw.leidenuniv.nl)     

Parietal and hippocampal contribution to topokinetic and topographic memory.

This paper reviews the involvement of the parietal cortex and the hippocampus in three kinds of spatial memory tasks which all require a memory of a previously experienced movement in space. The first task compared, by means of positron emission tomography (PET) scan techniques, the production, in darkness, of self-paced saccades (SAC) with the reproduction, in darkness, of a previously learned sequence of saccades to visual targets (SEQ). The results show that a bilateral increase of activity was seen in the depth of the intraparietal sulcus and the medial superior parietal cortex (superior parietal gyrus and precuneus) together with the frontal sulcus but only in the SEQ task, which involved memory of the previously seen targets and possibly also motor memory. The second task is the vestibular memory contingent task, which requires that the subject makes, in darkness, a saccade to the remembered position of a visual target after a passively imposed whole-body rotation. Deficits in this task, which involves vestibular memory, were found predominantly in patients with focal vascular lesions in the parieto-insular (vestibular) cortex, the supplementary motor area-supplementary eye field area, and the prefrontal cortex. The third task requires mental navigation from the memory of a previously learned route in a real environment (the city of Orsay in France). A PET scan study has revealed that when subjects were asked to remember visual landmarks there was a bilateral activation of the middle hippocampal regions, left inferior temporal gyrus, left hippocampal regions, precentral gyrus and posterior cingulate gyrus. If the subjects were asked to remember the route, and their movements along this route, bilateral activation of the dorsolateral cortex, posterior hippocampal areas, posterior cingulate gyrus, supplementary motor areas, right middle hippocampal areas, left precuneus, middle occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus and lateral premotor area was found. Subtraction between the two conditions reduced the activated areas to the left hippocampus, precuneus and insula. These data suggest that the hippocampus and parietal cortex are both involved in the dynamic aspects of spatial memory, for which the name ''topokinetic memory'' is proposed. These dynamic aspects could both overlap and be different from those involved in the cartographic and static aspects of ''topographic'' memory.     

Immaturity of the oculomotor saccade and vergence interaction in dyslexic children: evidence from a reading and visual search study

Studies comparing binocular eye movements during reading and visual search in dyslexic children are, at our knowledge, inexistent. In the present study we examined ocular motor characteristics in dyslexic children versus two groups of non dyslexic children with chronological/reading age-matched. Binocular eye movements were recorded by an infrared system (mobileEBT®, e(ye)BRAIN) in twelve dyslexic children (mean age 11 years old) and a group of chronological age-matched (N = 9) and reading age-matched (N = 10) non dyslexic children. Two visual tasks were used: text reading and visual search. Independently of the task, the ocular motor behavior in dyslexic children is similar to those reported in reading age-matched non dyslexic children: many and longer fixations as well as poor quality of binocular coordination during and after the saccades. In contrast, chronological age-matched non dyslexic children showed a small number of fixations and short duration of fixations in reading task with respect to visual search task; furthermore their saccades were well yoked in both tasks. The atypical eye movement''s patterns observed in dyslexic children suggest a deficiency in the visual attentional processing as well as an immaturity of the ocular motor saccade and vergence systems interaction.     

Reading and Visual Search: A Developmental Study in Normal Children

Studies dealing with developmental aspects of binocular eye movement behaviour during reading are scarce. In this study we have explored binocular strategies during reading and during visual search tasks in a large population of normal young readers. Binocular eye movements were recorded using an infrared video-oculography system in sixty-nine children (aged 6 to 15) and in a group of 10 adults (aged 24 to 39). The main findings are (i) in both tasks the number of progressive saccades (to the right) and regressive saccades (to the left) decreases with age; (ii) the amplitude of progressive saccades increases with age in the reading task only; (iii) in both tasks, the duration of fixations as well as the total duration of the task decreases with age; (iv) in both tasks, the amplitude of disconjugacy recorded during and after the saccades decreases with age; (v) children are significantly more accurate in reading than in visual search after 10 years of age. Data reported here confirms and expands previous studies on children''s reading. The new finding is that younger children show poorer coordination than adults, both while reading and while performing a visual search task. Both reading skills and binocular saccades coordination improve with age and children reach a similar level to adults after the age of 10. This finding is most likely related to the fact that learning mechanisms responsible for saccade yoking develop during childhood until adolescence.     

Causal attribution and psychobiological response to competition in young men

A contribution to a special issue on Hormones and Human Competition.Psychoneuroendocrine effects of competition have been widely accepted as a clear example of the relationship between androgens and aggressive/dominant behavior in humans. However, results about the effects of competitive outcomes are quite heterogeneous, suggesting that personal and contextual factors play a moderating role in this relationship. To further explore these dimensions, we aimed to examine (i) the effect of competition and its outcome on the psychobiological response to a laboratory competition in young men, and (ii) the moderating role of some cognitive dimensions such as causal attributions. To do so, we compared the responses of 56 healthy young men faced with two competitive tasks with different instructions. Twenty-eight men carried out a task whose instructions led subjects to think the outcome was due to their personal performance (“merit” task), whereas 28 other men faced a task whose outcome was attributable to luck (“chance” task). In both cases, outcome was manipulated by the experimenter. Salivary steroid hormones (testosterone and cortisol), cardiovascular variables (heart rate and blood pressure), and emotional state (mood and anxiety) were measured at different moments before, during and after both tasks. Our results did not support the “winner-loser effect” because no significant differences were found in the responses of winners and losers. However, significantly higher values on the testosterone and cardiovascular variables, along with slight decreases in positive mood, were associated with the merit-based competition, but not the chance-based condition. In addition, an exploratory factorial analysis grouped the response components into two patterns traditionally related to more active or more passive behaviors. Thus, our results suggest that the perception of contributing to the outcome is relevant in the psychobiological response to competition in men. Overall, our results reveal the importance of the appraisal of control and causal attribution in understanding human competitive interactions.     

Performance of Young Children on ‘‘Traveling Salesperson’’ Navigation Tasks Presented on a Touch Screen

Background

The traveling salesperson problem (TSP) refers to a task in which one finds the shortest path when traveling through multiple spatially distributed points. Little is known about the developmental course of the strategies used to solve TSPs. The present study examined young children''s performance and route selection strategies in one-way TSPs using a city-block metric. A touch screen-based navigation task was applied.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Children (39–70 months) and adults (21–35 years) made serial responses on a touch screen to move a picture of a dog (the target) to two or three identical pictures of a bone (the goals). For all the versions of the tasks, significant improvement in measures of performance was observed from younger to older participants. In TSPs in which a specific route selection strategy such as the nearest-neighbor strategy minimized the total traveling distance, older participants used that strategy more frequently than younger ones. By contrast, in TSPs in which multiple strategies equally led to the minimal traveling distance, children tended to use strategies different from those used by adults, such as traveling straight to the farthest goal first.

Conclusions/Significance

The results primarily suggest development of efficient route selection strategies that can optimize total numbers of movements and/or solution time. Unlike adults, children sometimes prioritized other strategies such as traveling straight ahead until being forced to change directions. This may reflect the fact that children were either less attentive to the task or less efficient at perceiving the overall shape of the problem and/or the relative distance from the starting location to each goal.     

The Presence of a Therapy Dog Results in Improved Object Recognition Performance in Preschool Children

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the presence of a dog would have an impact on object recognition memory performance of preschool children. This work represents an extension of previous research which found that preschoolers require fewer instructional prompts to complete this type of memory task when in the presence of a dog. If children require fewer instructional prompts it is possible that they are better able to focus on the task itself and as a result, improved memory performance is likely. Because the earlier experiment utilized a very simple version of the task that was readily completed by the preschool children, the overall performance data were at ceiling. The current study, involving 20 preschool children, included a manipulation of task difficulty through varying the number of distracters (one versus four) present at test. Increasing the number of distractors in a simple recognition task is known to make that task more challenging, and thus performance was expected to be slower and less accurate in the four distracter conditions relative to the one-distracter conditions. The collaborators in the study were either a therapy dog or a human. A two-way repeated measures design was used such that each child served as his/her own control and was tested in each of four separate conditions: dog present (one and four distracters) and human present (one and four distracters). The results showed that the preschool children performed the object recognition task faster and more accurately in the presence of the therapy dog relative to a human and also in the one-distracter versus four-distracter condition. The authors conclude that these effects result from increased focus and/or motivation resulting from the presence of the dog.