Exploring the Dynamics of Canine-Assisted Interactions: A Wearable Approach to Understanding Interspecies Well-Being
Simple SummaryThis study utilizes electronic sensors to investigate the outcomes of Canine Assisted Interactions (CAI), a growing therapeutic field, for both human and animal participants. It represents the first attempt to deploy synchronized wearable systems on both humans and dogs, allowing for the continuous and simultaneous collection of physiological and behavioral data during interactions. Leveraging this data, the research examines the real-time dynamics of CAIs, moving beyond traditional survey-based pre- and post-session evaluations. Three innovative visualization tools—a subsession heatmap, a synchrony table, and a metric correlation matrix—are introduced to better characterize the interactions and bonding within human-dog dyads. Preliminary exploratory analyses provide insights that inspire further investigation into CAI mechanisms. This research marks a significant step forward in using multimodal data collection to deepen our understanding of human-animal interactions, particularly in therapeutic settings. AbstractCanine-assisted interactions (CAIs) have been explored to offer therapeutic benefits to human participants in various contexts, from addressing cancer-related fatigue to treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite their widespread adoption, there are still unresolved questions regarding the outcomes for both humans and animals involved in these interactions. Previous attempts to address these questions have suffered from core methodological weaknesses, especially due to absence of tools for an efficient objective evaluation and lack of focus on the canine perspective. In this article, we present a first-of-its-kind system and study to collect simultaneous and continuous physiological data from both of the CAI interactants. Motivated by our extensive field reviews and stakeholder feedback, this comprehensive wearable system is composed of custom-designed and commercially available sensor devices. We performed a repeated-measures pilot study, to combine data collected via this system with a novel dyadic behavioral coding method and short- and long-term surveys. We evaluated these multimodal data streams independently, and we further correlated the psychological, physiological, and behavioral metrics to better elucidate the outcomes and dynamics of CAIs. Confirming previous field results, human electrodermal activity is the measure most strongly distinguished between the dyads’ non-interaction and interaction periods. Valence, arousal, and the positive affect of the human participant significantly increased during interaction with the canine participant. Also, we observed in our pilot study that (a) the canine heart rate was more dynamic than the human’s during interactions, (b) the surveys proved to be the best indicator of the subjects’ affective state, and (c) the behavior coding approaches best tracked the bond quality between the interacting dyads. Notably, we found that most of the interaction sessions were characterized by extended neutral periods with some positive and negative peaks, where the bonded pairs might display decreased behavioral synchrony. We also present three new representations of the internal and overall dynamics of CAIs for adoption by the broader field. Lastly, this paper discusses ongoing options for further dyadic analysis, interspecies emotion prediction, integration of contextually relevant environmental data, and standardization of human–animal interaction equipment and analytical approaches. Altogether, this work takes a significant step forward on a promising path to our better understanding of how CAIs improve well-being and how interspecies psychophysiological states can be appropriately measured. Keywords: canine-assisted interactions; wearable systems; psychophysiology sensors
Holder, T.R.N.; Nichols, C.; Summers, E.; Roberts, D.L.; Bozkurt, A. Exploring the Dynamics of Canine-Assisted Interactions: A Wearable Approach to Understanding Interspecies Well-Being. Animals 2024, 14, 3628. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14243628
