ABSTRACT While students are increasingly struggling with anxiety and depression, the effects of therapy dogs on student stress has only recently been explored. This study was conducted to investigate whether therapy dogs can improve student affect and to determine if these benefits extend to cognition in the form of enhanced ability to remember information. Forty-four college students were randomly assigned to interact with a therapy dog or not during both learning (session 1) and testing (session 2) in a paired-associates procedure. Arousal, stress, and mood were measured at the beginning and end of each session. As predicted, therapy dogs increased happiness and decreased stress and arousal. However, there was no difference in recognition memory for the paired associates between the therapy dog and control conditions. Mood was a significant predictor of memory, such that decreased happiness in session 2 predicted better recognition performance. These findings indicate that the benefits of therapy dogs are primarily affective and not cognitive.

中文翻译：

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治疗犬改善学生的影响，但不是记忆

摘要虽然学生越来越多地与焦虑和抑郁作斗争，但最近才探索了治疗犬对学生压力的影响。进行这项研究是为了调查治疗犬是否可以改善学生的情绪，并确定这些好处是否以增强记忆信息能力的形式扩展到认知。44 名大学生被随机分配在学习（第 1 课）和测试（第 2 课）的配对关联程序中与治疗犬互动或不与治疗犬互动。在每个会话的开始和结束时测量唤醒、压力和情绪。正如预测的那样，治疗犬增加了幸福感并减少了压力和唤醒。然而，治疗犬和对照条件之间配对关联的识别记忆没有差异。情绪是记忆力的重要预测因子，因此第 2 阶段的幸福感降低预示着更好的识别性能。这些发现表明治疗犬的好处主要是情感上的，而不是认知上的。