The human-animal bond
We know that human-animal relationships can be instrumental to wellbeing. But why? I am interested in exploring the tacit and internal psychological processes at work.
How does working with animals facilitate psychological flexibility?
A Contextual Behavioural Science Perspective
2025 - present
in the moment
present
willing
Some of my questions...
Does working with animals create natural contexts in which our behavioural, feeling, and thinking processes are altered, and our willingness to engage flexibly is facilitated?
1
Willingness
Do animals leave us more willing to engage with difficult experiences?
4
Innate desire
Why do animals pull us in so powerfully—what hunger in us do they answer?
2
Perspective taking
What changes within us when we try and enter an animal's world?
5
Comitted action
Do animals create natural contexts in which we enact values-aligned behaviours?
3
Cognitive defusion
Can animals show us that words are just words, loosen the grip of language?
6
Present-moment awareness
How do the attentional demands of animals reshape our thought processes and presence?
Math anxiety — the negative feelings that arise when thinking about or performing math — is a meaningful barrier to learning. This study tested a novel animal-assisted education intervention using a math-targeted therapy dog approach to reduce math anxiety and improve math performance. Following a promising pilot study showing significant reductions in math trait anxiety, a larger mixed-measures investigation was conducted with 201 students aged 6–9 years from two international schools in Mauritius. Across sessions, children in the intervention group showed consistent, statistically reliable reductions in both general state anxiety and math state anxiety from pre- to post-session, indicating immediate emotion regulation effects. Math performance also improved more over time in the intervention group than in the control group.
While baseline differences between groups mean that evidence for a specific effect on math trait anxiety remains inconclusive, these findings demonstrate that short, adaptable interventions can be effectively implemented to support emotion regulation and greater math engagement in the classroom.
What we did
children measured maths trait, state, and general anxiety
200
children participated in two 15-minute therapy dog sessions
68
3
therapy dogs were part of the team
What we found
Improved emotional regulation
Children showed immediate reductions in in-the-moment general state anxiety and maths-specific state anxiety from before to after each session. This could be because children are too focused on the dog to worry about the maths.
Supported maths performance
Children who did maths with a dog showed stronger improvement in maths performance over time compared to children who did not do maths with a dog. This could be a result of the reduced anxiety within maths sessions.
Maybe reduced trait anxiety
Therapy dog sessions may reduce longer-term “trait” maths anxiety, but because the groups differed at baseline, we cannot draw a firm conclusion about this effect. Further studies are needed to confirm this finding.
Produced lasting lower state anxiety
Therapy dog sessions were associated with a sustained drop in in-the-moment maths-specific anxiety over the programme, with maths anxiety within each session and from the start to the end of the therapy dogs maths progamme.