Measuring social synchrony and stress in the handler-dog dyad during animal-assisted activities: A pilot study

摘要: Abstract Synchrony—the coordination of behavior between interacting partners—is a complex phenomenon requiring the perception and integration multimodal communicative signals. Originally conceptualized by developmental psychologists to study human-human relationship, it could also apply cross-species interactions. Here, we examined synchrony patterns as potentially important mechanism evaluate human-dog interactions during animal-assisted activities. Four dog handler-dog dyads were videotaped before (T 0 ), 1 after 2 ) 45-minute sessions activities coded for following patterns: gaze synchrony, joint attention, touch synchrony. Both partners' salivary cortisol heart rate dogs' behaviors measured identify any signs stress that would lower levels All showed synchronous in T , whereas these absent . On average, highest frequency was recorded ( P