Clinical Trial Details
— Status: Active, not recruiting
Administrative data
| NCT number |
NCT05950672 |
| Other study ID # |
HE-2022-29 |
| Secondary ID |
|
| Status |
Active, not recruiting |
| Phase |
N/A
|
| First received |
|
| Last updated |
|
| Start date |
April 1, 2023 |
| Est. completion date |
September 30, 2026 |
Study information
| Verified date |
May 2024 |
| Source |
Oregon State University |
| Contact |
n/a |
| Is FDA regulated |
No |
| Health authority |
|
| Study type |
Interventional
|
Clinical Trial Summary
This R21 provides a multidisciplinary One Health approach to developing and evaluating a
novel Cat Assisted Training (CAT) animal assisted intervention (AAI) for early adolescents
with developmental disabilities (DD) and their family cat. Cat social behavior and welfare is
heavily influenced by human behavior and training, making it highly likely that cats would
also benefit from this program. There remains a critical need for further empirical
evaluation of AAI practices, especially those that target the specific needs of youth with
disabilities. Further extending the development and evaluation of activity-based AAIs beyond
those that include dogs and horses also helps address the critical need to consider and
include diverse human participants, creating new equitable opportunities for AAI involvement
to those who may have access to cats, but not dogs and horses (due to practical, health,
cultural, socio-economic, or other personal reasons).
Description:
This R21 provides a multidisciplinary One Health approach to developing and evaluating a
novel Cat Assisted Training (CAT) animal assisted intervention (AAI) for early adolescents
with developmental disabilities (DD) and their family cat. The novel CAT intervention will be
a 6-week cat walking and training program for youth 10 - 12 years old. Participants will
learn how to respond appropriately to cat body language, practice fear-free and positive
reinforcement-based handling, and training skills, and how to fit a harness and walk their
cats on leash. For the human participants, skills and behaviors learned during the
intervention are expected to promote and support long-term physical activity, social
wellbeing, and lasting feelings of responsibility even after the intervention itself has
concluded. We also expect these experiences to improve the relationship between the child
participant and household cat, and in turn, reduce cat stress in the child's presence and
increase cat sociability and indicators of behavioral wellbeing. Because each child will
participate with a cat already living in their household, this program will create a unique
active partnership between child and cat that considers the health and wellbeing of both
partners. Recent pilot work by PIs Udell & MacDonald has revealed physical and
social-emotional improvements in children with and without developmental disabilities
following a pet dog-partner based AAI. Dogs also showed increased sociability and attachment
towards their child partner after AAI participation. Work by PI Udell & Vitale has
demonstrated that many cats are highly social and form strong attachment bonds with humans,
that cats can be successfully trained a wide range of behaviors, including leash walking, and
that cat training classes result in high participant retention rates. Cat social behavior and
welfare is also heavily influenced by human behavior and training, making it highly likely
that cats would also benefit from this program. There remains a critical need for further
empirical evaluation of AAI practices, especially those that target the specific needs of
at-risk populations and youth. Further extending the development and evaluation of
activity-based AAIs beyond those that include dogs and horses also helps address the critical
need to consider and include diverse human participants, creating new equitable opportunities
for AAI involvement to those who may have access to cats, but not dogs and horses (due to
practical, health, cultural, socio-economic, or other personal reasons).
