Influences of a dog´s presence on the human´s tolerance of an aversive sound and on the valuation of the session

• Grant number: 14/04053-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2014
• End date: March 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Camila Domeniconi
• Grantee: Laura Sodré Galvão Garcia
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Humans started domesticating animals for the last 10 thousand years. The benefits of this are related to physical and mental health, being even associated as a protection factor against depression and anxiety. Although, the lack of operationalization methods hinder replicability the comprehension of this phenomenon and the scientific production. This project intend to investigate the influence of a dog´s presence on the human's tolerance of an aversive sound during a task and its influence on the evaluation of the task. Sixty students will participate, being randomly assigned in one of the three experimental conditions. On all three conditions the participants will be exposed to a monotonic aversive sound, using headphones attached to a laptop. In conditions 1 and 2, participants will listen to the aversive sound while having distractor stimuli present. In the first condition, the distractor will be an art book, and in the second, the distractor will be a dog. On the control situation the participants will listen to the sound while stay in a room without any distractors. The tolerance to the aversive stimulation will be measured by the latency of removal of the headphones, heartbeat rate, the number of specified behaviors (laughing, environment exploration and verbalizations) and the answers of a semantic differential of all participants. The results will be analyzed statistically and are expected to corroborate the findings of these area by showing that the dogs have positive effects on the men's tolerance of aversive situations, with a replicable and operationalized methodology. (AU)