More than 50 years ago, the Psychiatrist Boris Levinson gave birth, quite by accident, to the concept of dogs as ‘co-therapists’. In a paper that turned out to be at the basis of Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI), he described the unexpected benefits that the presence of his dog brought to his counseling sessions with children and youth, and provided numerous examples of ways in which a positive interaction with animals could enhance therapy. By stressing the need to empirically evaluate his model and highlighting a number of research questions that would be fruitful to explore at that point, he opened the way for the emergence of a multi-disciplinary field of research known as Anthrozoology, or Human-Animal Interaction (HAI). This field encompasses the relationships between people and animals, the emotional and cognitive mechanisms underlying them, and the ways in which they may affect human physical and psychological health and well-being, namely in clinical populations. Within these, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been suggested, by markedly varied studies, as a target population that may specially benefit from positive interactions with animals, and particularly, dogs. To date, however, there is no comprehensive overview integrating data of relevance to the field of ASD from both ‘laboratory’ studies (i.e. studies focusing on particulars aspects of the dog-human interaction) and ‘clinical’ investigations (i.e., research evaluating dog-assisted interventions for ASD), nor any discussion on the need to evaluate the application of laboratory findings to targeted therapeutic protocols. The purpose of the information presented inthis poster is to fill this gap in the literature while, simultaneously, calling for attention on how far we still are today, within the particular field of ASD, from a proper analysis of the questions first brought to light by Levinson himself more than half a century ago.
