Teaching children and parents to understand dog signalling

教导孩子和家长理解狗的信号

• 批准号: 8231001
• 负责人: Kerstin Meints
• 金额: $ 5.08万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-02-01 至 2013-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8231001
• 关键词: Address; Adult; Aggressive behavior; Anger; Animals; Asses; Awareness; Back; Behavior; Bite; Body part; Canis familiaris; Child; Child health care; Conscious; Data; Development; Disabled Persons; Distress; Dog Bite; Dog family; Educational process of instructing; Effectiveness of Interventions; Evaluation; Experimental Designs; Eye; Eye Movements; Face; Family; Future; General Population; Goals; Head; Health; Health Services; Human; Injury; Interview; Knowledge; Learning; Life; Link; Measures; Methods; Mind; National Health Services; Nose; Outcome; Parents; Participant; Pattern; Perception; Personal Satisfaction; Phase; Population; Population Group; Procedures; Process; Questionnaires; Reading; Research; Research Design; Research Methodology; Risk; Safety; Scanning; Service Statistics; Side; Signal Transduction; Socioeconomic Status; Stimulus; Stress; Testing; Therapeutic; Time; Tooth structure; Training; Visual; age difference; age group; body language; cognitive change; design; emotional distress; feeding; high risk; improved; information gathering; innovation; mature animal; novel; programs; research study; skills; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): When trying to enable safe human-animal interaction, it is vital to be able to interpret the animal's signalling correctly to avoid injury to the personand distress to the animal. However, it has been shown that children and adults often do not understand dogs' body signalling (Reisner & Shofer 2008). Without tuition, children look mainly at the dog's face. In addition, children often confuse a fearful or angry dog with a friendly one (Lakestani, 2006, Meints, Racca & Hickey, 2010). Specific aims: This experimental study will investigate how children from 3-5 and adults perceive and interpret dogs' stress signaling. We will then teach children and parents to link their perception of the dog with the correct interpretation of dogs' stress signalling. This way, we help children to understand dog's stress signalling and interpret dog behaviour better and enable them to interact with dogs more safely in the future. We will also teach parents to recognise and interpret the stress signals correctly, so that they also know how to treat their pet dog (and other dogs) more appropriately - and are in turn able to convey this information to others in future. As a consequence, dogs' well-being will also be significantly enhanced. Implications for the health of children, and dogs: If we can teach children to recognise and interpret their own and other dogs' stress signalling better, both sides will profit significantly: children will get bitten less, and the (family) dog will enjoy mor respectful and more appropriate treatment. With bite figures from interview data as high as 47% (Beck & Jones,1985; Spiegel, 2000), recent National Health Service statistics in the UK showing a 40% increase in dog bite figures (NHS, 2008), and our own recent data showing 26% of the population having been bitten (Meints et al., in prep.), we are addressing a serious and wide-spread - but largely avoidable - problem. Wider implications: We promote safe living together of humans and animals and aim to maximise health and safety for children, adults and animals. Our experimental study will be used to teach and inform dog owners and their families, will be fed back to the general public, inform the media, be usable for organisations like "Dogs for the disabled" and where dogs are used in therapeutic or educational settings and will be helping to teach the public about dog signalling effectively. Research design and methods: Using an experimental design (cross-sectional with longitudinal) we will test children from 3-5 years (24 per experimental group) on their evaluation of a video of dogs in various situations and degrees of being distressed (e.g. licking nose, turning away, growling) recording eye-movements and scan patterns using a Tobii eye-tracker and asking for and recording verbal evaluations of dog signals in the initial baseline test-phase. We will then teach them the correct interpretation reusing the same videos, explaining the dog's signalling. After this, we will re-test them on novel videos with similar situations. We will re-test 6 and 12 months later. This design has the advantage that we can measure conscious verbal interpretations, and also see where on the dog participants focus. Thus, we can compare utterances with looking behaviour and detect discrepancies should they exist. We will also test children's parents using the same procedure. In addition, we will gather information on bite incidents, parents' knowledge on dog signalling, family status and SES. We can also use the combined information to establish which situations are least well evaluated to help children and parents to interpret dogs' stress signals more correctly in future. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: As children are at a high risk for dog bite injuries, teaching children to recognise and interpret dog signalling correctly enables them to behave appropriately with their own and other dogs - thus, they can learn to recognise risk situations more easily to avoid getting bitten. The results of this empirical study will be used to inform dog owners and their families about how children - and adults - interpret or misinterpret dogs' stress signals and the programme will be made available online for the public to inform and learn from. It will also inform the media, will be usable for organisations like "Dogs for the disabled" and wil be very helpful also where dogs are used in other therapeutic or educational settings and to teach the public about how to better interpret dog signalling.

描述（由申请人提供）：在试图实现安全的人动物相互作用时，能够正确解释动物的信号以避免对动物的痛苦受伤，这一点至关重要。但是，已经表明，儿童和成人通常不了解狗的身体信号（Reisner＆Shofer 2008）。没有学费，孩子们主要看着狗的脸。此外，孩子们经常将恐惧或愤怒的狗与友好的狗混淆（Lakestani，2006年，Meints，Racca＆Hickey，2010年）。具体目的：这项实验研究将研究来自3-5岁和成年人的儿童如何看待和解释狗的压力信号。然后，我们将教孩子和父母将他们对狗的看法与对狗的压力信号的正确解释联系起来。这样，我们帮助孩子们了解狗的压力信号，并更好地解释狗的行为，并使他们将来能够更安全地与狗互动。我们还将教父母正确地识别和解释压力信号，以便他们也知道如何更适当地对待他们的宠物狗（和其他狗） - 依次能够将此信息传达给其他人。结果，狗的福祉也将大大增强。对儿童和狗的健康的影响：如果我们可以教孩子识别和解释自己和其他狗的压力信号更好，双方都会大大获利：儿童会更少咬伤，而（家庭）狗将享受Mor的尊重和更合适的待遇。访谈数据的咬合数字高达47％（Beck＆Jones，1985; Spiegel，2000），英国的最新国家卫生服务统计数据显示，狗咬数字增加了40％（NHS，2008年），我们自己的最新数据以及我们自己的26％的人口显示了被咬伤的人群（Meints et al。更广泛的含义：我们促进人类和动物的安全生活，旨在最大程度地利用儿童，成人和动物的健康和安全。我们的实验研究将用于教授和通知狗主及其家人，将被送回公众，通知媒体，可用于诸如“残疾人狗”之类的组织，以及在治疗或教育环境中使用狗的地方，并将帮助公众有效地教导狗信号。 Research design and methods: Using an experimental design (cross-sectional with longitudinal) we will test children from 3-5 years (24 per experimental group) on their evaluation of a video of dogs in various situations and degrees of being distressed (e.g. licking nose, turning away, growling) recording eye-movements and scan patterns using a Tobii eye-tracker and asking for and recording verbal evaluations of dog signals in the initial baseline测试相。然后，我们将教给他们正确的解释，重复使用相同的视频，从而解释狗的信号。之后，我们将在小说中重新测试它们 带有类似情况的视频。我们将在6个月后重新测试。该设计的优势是我们可以衡量有意识的言语解释，还可以查看狗参与者的关注位置。因此，我们可以将话语与外观行为进行比较，并在存在差异的情况下进行比较。我们还将使用相同的程序测试孩子的父母。此外，我们将收集有关咬合事件的信息，父母对狗信号，家庭状况和SES的了解。我们还可以使用合并的信息来确定哪些情况最少评估，以帮助儿童和父母将来更正确地解释狗的压力信号。 公共卫生相关性：随着儿童受到狗咬伤的高风险，教孩子们识别和解释狗的信号正确使他们能够与自己和其他狗的行为适当地表现 - 因此，他们可以学会更轻松地识别风险情况，以免被咬伤。这项实证研究的结果将用于告知狗 业主及其家人关于儿童 - 和成年人如何解释或误解狗的压力信号，该计划将在线提供供公众提供信息和学习。它还将告知媒体，适用于“残疾狗”等组织，并且在其他治疗或教育环境中使用狗，并教会公众如何更好地解释狗的信号。