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）：当试图实现安全的人与动物互动时，能够正确解释动物的信号以避免对人造成伤害和对动物造成痛苦至关重要。然而，研究表明，儿童和成人通常不理解狗的身体信号（Reisner & Shofer 2008）。没有辅导，孩子们主要看狗的脸。此外，孩子们经常将害怕或愤怒的狗与友好的狗混淆（Lakestani，2006，Meints，Racca & Hickey，2010）。具体目标：这项实验研究将调查 3-5 岁的儿童和成人如何感知和解释狗的压力信号。然后，我们将教孩子和家长将对狗的看法与对狗的压力信号的正确解释联系起来。通过这种方式，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） - 进而能够在将来将这些信息传达给其他人。因此，狗的健康状况也将显着提高。对儿童和狗的健康的影响：如果我们能够教孩子更好地识别和解释自己和其他狗的压力信号，双方都会受益匪浅：孩子被咬的次数会减少，（家庭）狗会享受更多的乐趣尊重和更适当的待遇。访谈数据中的咬伤数字高达 47%（B​​eck & Jones，1985 年；Spiegel，2000 年），英国国家卫生服务部门最近的统计数据显示，狗咬伤数字增加了 40%（NHS，2008 年），而我们自己最近的数据显示，狗咬伤数字增加了 40%（NHS，2008 年）。数据显示 26% 的人口被咬伤（Meints 等人，准备中），我们正在解决一个严重且广泛存在但基本上可以避免的问题。更广泛的影响：我们促进人类和动物安全共处，旨在最大限度地提高儿童、成人和动物的健康和安全。我们的实验研究将用于教育和告知狗主人及其家人，将反馈给公众，告知媒体，可用于“残疾人狗”等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了解狗的信号。研究设计和方法：使用实验设计（横断面和纵向），我们将测试 3-5 岁的儿童（每个实验组 24 名）对狗在各种情况和痛苦程度（例如舔）的视频的评估使用 Tobii 眼动仪记录眼球运动和扫描模式，并在初始基线测试阶段询问并记录对狗信号的口头评估。然后，我们将使用相同的视频教他们正确的解释，解释狗的信号。之后，我们将在小说上重新测试它们 类似情况的视频。我们将在 6 个月和 12 个月后重新测试。这种设计的优点是我们可以测量有意识的言语解释，还可以了解参与者关注的狗的注意力。因此，我们可以将话语与表情行为进行比较，并检测是否存在差异。我们还将使用相同的程序对孩子的父母进行测试。此外，我们还将收集有关咬伤事件、家长对狗发出信号的知识、家庭状况和社会经济地位的信息。我们还可以使用综合信息来确定哪些情况评估最差，以帮助孩子和父母将来更正确地解读狗的压力信号。 公共卫生相关性：由于儿童遭受狗咬伤的风险很高，因此教儿童正确识别和解释狗的信号使他们能够与自己的狗和其他狗做出适当的行为 - 因此，他们可以学会更容易地识别风险情况并避免被咬。这项实证研究的结果将用于告知狗 主人及其家人了解儿童和成人如何解释或误解狗的压力信号，该计划将在网上发布，供公众告知和学习。它还将为媒体提供信息，可用于“残疾人狗”等组织，并且对于在其他治疗或教育环境中使用狗以及教导公众如何更好地解释狗的信号也非常有帮助。