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Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults

Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) have been found to benefit human emotional state and cognitive performance. Recent applications of AAI have extended to classrooms with a range of intentions including to improve literacy. This Canadian study sought to examine differences in reading performance an...

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Autores principales: Syrnyk, Corinne, McArthur, Alisa, Zwack, Alyson, Handelsman, Allison
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9589535/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36312220
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01392-5
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author Syrnyk, Corinne
McArthur, Alisa
Zwack, Alyson
Handelsman, Allison
author_facet Syrnyk, Corinne
McArthur, Alisa
Zwack, Alyson
Handelsman, Allison
author_sort Syrnyk, Corinne
collection PubMed
description Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) have been found to benefit human emotional state and cognitive performance. Recent applications of AAI have extended to classrooms with a range of intentions including to improve literacy. This Canadian study sought to examine differences in reading performance and behaviour in early readers identified as requiring extra supports following exposure to a canine-assisted and adult-assisted reading support. Twenty-four 7- to 8-year-olds experienced both supports in random order. At the start of the study and after completion of either support learners’ oral reading, reading comprehension, social functioning, and reading affect were assessed. Parents, teachers, and children were also asked a range of closed- and open-ended questions. Findings showed evidence of improvement in reading performance, particularly after reading to a dog. There was also evidence of improved social competence overall and decreased problematic behaviour, although this was dependent on order of exposure. Teacher and parent reports showed they believed both supports to improve learner skills and affect for reading, and that teachers made more distinctions here. Implications for the practical application and relevance of methodological detail for future work are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-95895352022-10-24 Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults Syrnyk, Corinne McArthur, Alisa Zwack, Alyson Handelsman, Allison Early Child Educ J Article Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) have been found to benefit human emotional state and cognitive performance. Recent applications of AAI have extended to classrooms with a range of intentions including to improve literacy. This Canadian study sought to examine differences in reading performance and behaviour in early readers identified as requiring extra supports following exposure to a canine-assisted and adult-assisted reading support. Twenty-four 7- to 8-year-olds experienced both supports in random order. At the start of the study and after completion of either support learners’ oral reading, reading comprehension, social functioning, and reading affect were assessed. Parents, teachers, and children were also asked a range of closed- and open-ended questions. Findings showed evidence of improvement in reading performance, particularly after reading to a dog. There was also evidence of improved social competence overall and decreased problematic behaviour, although this was dependent on order of exposure. Teacher and parent reports showed they believed both supports to improve learner skills and affect for reading, and that teachers made more distinctions here. Implications for the practical application and relevance of methodological detail for future work are discussed. Springer Netherlands 2022-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9589535/ /pubmed/36312220 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01392-5 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Syrnyk, Corinne
McArthur, Alisa
Zwack, Alyson
Handelsman, Allison
Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults
title Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults
title_full Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults
title_fullStr Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults
title_full_unstemmed Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults
title_short Supporting Young Readers: A Mixed-Methods Study of Their Literacy, Behaviour, and Perceptions When Reading Aloud to Dogs or Adults
title_sort supporting young readers: a mixed-methods study of their literacy, behaviour, and perceptions when reading aloud to dogs or adults
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9589535/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36312220
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01392-5
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