Author: Delaney Piantanida | Major: Nursing | Semester: Fall 2024
My name is Delaney Piantanida, and I am senior honors student graduating in Fall 2024. I am a nursing major in the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing (EMSON), which falls under the College of Education and Health Professions. I am completing my honors research project with a team consisting of myself, two other honors nursing students, Dr. Michele Kilmer as our EMSON faculty mentor, and Mrs. Terria Hawley as a committee member. Our research is centered on the effects of animal-assisted therapy on the prosocial behavior and emotional regulation of children at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participating in this research has been very exciting, and I am very grateful to have been a part of this and to have learned so much about such an important and interesting topic. I heard about Dr. Kilmer’s research prior to deciding on a route for my thesis, and it immediately piqued my interest, but I became really invested after seeing a presentation from her previous research group at Nursing Science Day 2023. After that, I joined her research team for this study, and since then I have grown such a passion for this domain of nursing care as well as for research as a whole. The challenges were abundant, as this is highly involved research and I am in nursing school which in itself is difficult, but Dr. Kilmer has been so helpful through it all. Precise and strict time management is something that I definitely had to learn throughout this project, but I am grateful for that developed skill going forward. Having a team to do this with was so great, not only because of the divided workload, but also for the support and colleagueship we fostered. This semester, we concluded our data collection, ran statistics, and wrote a final paper analyzing the aggregate data. As a next step, our faculty mentor, Dr. Kilmer, will be submitting our paper for publication and commencing a clinical trial!
Our research focuses on the characteristics of autism spectrum disorder and how they can be treated. Autism spectrum disorder is a condition that manifests with impaired ability to emotionally regulate and decreased prosocial behavior, and while there is no cure for ASD, treatments are available to try to improve these domains and decrease how much ASD impacts daily life. One of these is animal-assisted therapy (AAT), which uses a trained therapy animal, usually a canine, to reduce anxiety and enhance social skills. This intervention is still being researched, including studies being done by Dr. Kilmer, but there is a lack of literature on some aspects surrounding AAT and this study was designed to fill in some of those gaps. This study specifically looks at the effects of AAT when using a live therapy canine versus a plush toy canine, which is life-sized and made to look as much like the live canine as possible. There is already data to show that AAT is effective for ASD, but this study aims to prove that the trained canine’s therapeutic techniques account for some of the improvement rather than just the professional’s talk therapy. Therefore, this study is incredibly beneficial to the nursing practice as well as autism research and care.
Overall, this research has been so rewarding and interesting. Again, I have loved being a part of this and working with Dr. Kilmer. She is so passionate about this research and working with her has been so enriching and inspiring. She is involved in every aspect of this research, including the recruiting, therapy, coding, statistical analysis, data interpretation, and so much more, and she does so with so much intentionality and compassion for the autism community. I am grateful for the honors faculty, my research team, Gryffin (the therapy canine), and most of all Dr. Kilmer for making this honors thesis enjoyable and so fulfilling.