Pets May Help Improve Social Skills of Autistic Kids

A team of researchers have revealed that regular interaction with pets can help improve autistic children's social skills and tone down their "problem" behaviours.

The recent study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, tried to provide substantial evidence to support the idea that keeping a pet at home can help children overcome certain communication difficulties related to autism.

Researcher Gretchen Carlisle, along with colleagues from the University of Missouri in United States, conducted the study.

"When I compared the social skills of children with autism who lived with dogs to those who did not, the children with dogs appeared to have greater social skills," said Carlisle, research fellow at the Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction (ReCHAI) in the [Missouri University] College of Veterinary Medicine, New York Magazine reports.

Earlier, it was opined that only dogs help autistic children in coping with behavioural problems, but the new study suggests that any type of pet - be it rabbits or cat - are equally beneficial.

Children, aged between eight and 18, undergoing treatments at the MU Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, and their 70 families were included in the study.

Having a companion 24*7 helps the autistic children become more open to people in general. Autistic children who had pets at home mingled more with outsiders than children without having any pets at home.

"More significantly, however, the data revealed that children with any kind of pet in the home reported being more likely to engage in behaviors such as introducing themselves, asking for information or responding to other people's questions. These kinds of social skills typically are difficult for kids with autism, but this study showed children's assertiveness was greater if they lived with a pet," Carlisle stated in the news release.

The longer a child was around a pet, the better it is for his/her social skills. In most of the cases, children preferred or were more attached to smaller dogs.

The finding is significant as it comes at a time when one in every 160 children in the world is autistic.

The research supports a 2012 study that appeared in journal PLOS ONE. Marine Grandgeorge and colleagues from the Hospital Research Center of Brest in France, found that children with pets showed improvement in two areas of communication, mainly "offering to share" and "offering comfort".