Animal-assisted interventions in children’s language and their speech therapy application
Intervenciones asistidas con animales en el lenguaje infantil y su aplicación fonoaudiológica
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Animal-assisted interventions are an interdisciplinary therapeutic strategy that integrates animals as mediators for stimulating and rehabilitating children's language. The objective of this systematic review was to analyze scientific evidence on their impact on children's language and their application in speech-language pathology practice. A systematic search was conducted in databases such as PubMed, Scopus, Springer, ScienceDirect, Redalyc, Dialnet, Google Scholar, Wiley, SciELO, and SciSpace, selecting 50 documents published between 2015 and 2025. These were analyzed in two stages: a filtering by titles and abstracts, followed by an in-depth reading of each document, which allowed for the extraction of methodological, theoretical, and qualitative variables.
The results show that this intervention improves verbal expression, comprehension, prosody, articulation, language pragmatics, social interaction, and joint attention. Most studies highlight benefits for children diagnosed with mixed language disorder, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other conditions that affect communication.
In conclusion, this intervention is becoming established as an effective complementary tool to conventional speech therapy practice; however, the need for greater participation of speech therapists in interdisciplinary teams and standardization of therapeutic protocols was identified, in order to promote natural and motivating communicative contexts that enhance the development of children's language and communication through animal-assisted interventions.
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