A Study on the Effectiveness of Therapy Dog Assisted Program through Repeated Interventions for the Autistic Children

자폐아동의 대인상호작용 증진을 위한 치료견 매개프로그램의 효과 및 효과 지속성에 대한 평가

This study concerns therapeutic effects and long-term effects of Therapy Dog Assisted Program (TDAP) on autistic children. Subjects participating in this study are two groups of Korean elementary school boys of the same age (twelve years old) : an experimental group and a controlled group of equal number of children (six children in total). The thirteen different sessions of the first intervention and eight different sessions of the second intervention were performed over six months (from April 20th to October 27th, 2000). Two standard instrument (ASIEP, E-CLAC) are used as major instruments in order to evaluate the effectiveness of TDAP. Evidene from the present study indicates that the children participating in TDAP program achieved a greater degree of improvement in their social interaction in comparison with the counterpart. The present study also demonstrates that, in general, the effectiveness of TDAP somewhat decreased after the termination of TDAP with some exceptions. However we also found that the effectiveness of TDAP were maintained in the some behavioral area such as bowing to teacher, play for cooperation with peers, which activities were sufficiently offered TDAP to the children. The questions of possible influence of parental support and other family background of each individual autistic child on the effect and long-term effect of TDAP need to be addressed in future study.