Effect of the presence of a dog on pre-adolescent children's learning of canine anatomy and physiology

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Children are interested in animals and this focus may increase attention for and, thus, retention of related information. The research hypothesis was that a dog in the classroom would aid learning of given knowledge about canine anatomy and physiology in pre-adolescent children. METHODOLOGY A class of fifteen 8 year old children in Pisa (Italy) was randomly divided in 2 groups: A (5 girls and 2 boys) and B (6 girls and 2 boys). Each group attended 6 lessons matched for topic (with audio-visual aids) and teacher. For every lecture, one group attended in the presence of a 2 year old female dog and the other without the animal; condition was reversed for the following lesson. Therefore, both groups attended 3 lectures with the dog and 3 lectures without. At the end of each lesson, children filled out a 10-item questionnaire on the lesson topic; these were completed again 3 months later. Numbers of correct answers for the dog or no-dog condition by lesson were compared using Chi-square test (p<0.05).RESULTS Results showed that children performed significantly better when the dog was present. This was true for all lectures except the first: 2nd (?2=5.293; p=0.007), 3rd (?2=7.904; p=0.000), 4th (?2=5.029; p=0.025), 5th (?2=4.373; p=0.008) and 6th (?2=5.167; p=0.023) lesson. At the follow-up, a decline in knowledge retention was observed in both conditions, but more evident in the dog-present (mean±standard deviation: 7.89±0.27 to 5.59±0.29) than in the no-dog condition (6.18±0.90 to 5.83±0.54). No differences persisted between the two conditions. CONCLUSIONS The presence of a dog in the classroom seems to increase children’s short-term learning of a related topic. This may be due to the dog acting as a focus for attention for related information. However, findings suggest this increased attentiveness in the dog’s presence does not influence long-term retention