Assessing Effects of an Assistance Dog on Social Communication and Interaction of a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder and his Family: An Exploratory Single-Case Study

Abstract

This exploratory case study using a mixed analytic approach aimed to assess the assistance dog’s effects on social behaviors (SB) of a child with ASD. The first objective was to examine the frequency of 26 SB. The second objective aimed to assess symptoms of ASD. The third objective was to describe the mother’s experience. One family participated in 17 sessions of direct observations. The mother completed the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ), the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale-Second Edition (GARS-2), and a semi-structured interview. The findings showed a discrepancy between the effects measured by direct observations and the parent’s perceived benefits.

Keywords:

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
• exploratory case study
• siblings
• assistance dog
• social behaviors

Acknowledgements

We thank the family who participated in this study for their generosity, involvement, and assiduity. All family members were charitable of their time and shared their home with us for one year. We are we are very grateful for your participation without which this study could not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No funding was received for conducting this study. The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose. The Ethics Board (CIEREH) of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) for research involving human participants approved this study. Written and verbal freely informed consent was obtained from both parents to participate and to the submission of the case study in a publish journal. Raw data of the child behaviours will not be shared to respect confidentiality as it is a case study. First author conceived this study, recruited, coordinated the experiment, collected, analysed, interpreted the data, and wrote the manuscript as part of her doctoral studies. Second author developed this study with the first author bringing out main conceptual ideas, provided the training for behavioural coding, supervised the experiment, contributed to the interpretation of the results, and revised the manuscript. Third author contributed to the conception of the study, the interpretation of the results and revised the manuscript. All authors provided critical feedback, helped shape the study, contributed to, and approved the manuscript. Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac (Version 16.59) was used for Figure 1 (timeline). Microsoft Excel for Mac (Version 16.59) was used for Figures 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (graphs).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.