ABSTRACT Dog-assisted educational programs, including reading programs, are becoming an area of research focus, based on claims of various advantages for children. However, while available findings typically indicate benefits for the children involved, the low quality of evidence makes it difficult to draw valid inferences. In the current study three dog-assisted programs with clearly defined parameters were developed and evaluated. Sixty-three children, aged 6 to 8 years, were matched on age and gender and pseudo-randomly allocated to one of the three conditions. In one condition the children participated in eight 15–20 minute sessions over a four-week period, in which they worked in pairs to train a dog to complete obstacle course tasks. In a second condition the children spent the same amount of time reading out loud, in pairs, to a stationary dog. In the third condition children participated in normal classroom activities with a dog present in the classroom. This intervention ran for up to four hours per week over the four-week period. Validated measures were used to assess reading abilities pre- and post-intervention. From the results it appeared that children showed significant improvements across time for reading ability for all three conditions, including the condition with minimal dog contact, with no significant group or interaction effects. Exploratory analyses unexpectedly indicated that children who had lower starting abilities displayed the greatest levels of reading improvement. While it cannot be determined that these findings are the result of the presence of the dog alone, they nonetheless may indicate that dog-assisted reading programs are an effective means of benefitting those children who most need help to become fluent readers.

中文翻译：

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学校里的狗：特定的人与狗互动对 6 至 8 岁儿童阅读能力的影响

摘要 狗辅助教育计划，包括阅读计划，正成为研究重点领域，基于对儿童的各种优势的主张。然而，虽然现有的研究结果通常表明对所涉及的儿童有益，但证据质量低使得难以得出有效的推论。在当前的研究中，开发和评估了三个具有明确定义参数的狗辅助程序。63 名 6 至 8 岁的儿童按年龄和性别进行匹配，并伪随机分配到三种情况之一。在一种情况下，孩子们在为期 4 周的时间内参加了 8 次 15-20 分钟的课程，在这些课程中，他们两人一组训练一只狗完成障碍训练任务。在第二种情况下，孩子们花同样多的时间大声朗读，两人一组，对一只静止的狗。在第三种情况下，孩子们在课堂上有一只狗的情况下参加了正常的课堂活动。在为期四个星期的时间里，这种干预每周最多持续四个小时。使用经过验证的措施来评估干预前后的阅读能力。从结果来看，儿童在所有三种情况下的阅读能力随着时间的推移都显示出显着提高，包括与狗接触最少的情况，没有显着的群体或互动影响。探索性分析出人意料地表明，起始能力较低的儿童在阅读方面的进步最大。虽然不能确定这些发现是狗单独存在的结果，