CBS3 Pet Project: Study Finds Children Are More Comfortable Reading To Dogs Because They Are Less Judgmental
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Pennsylvania SPCA animal advocate Carol Erickson joins CBS3 Sunday morning for this week's Pet Project segment. It's back to school time and everybody is either in class or sitting at the kitchen table participating remotely.
But here is a really good thing. There is a study that says kids are more comfortable reading to dogs, in fact they have been reading to dogs probably for centuries, but they really started studying it around 1999.
What they found out then and now is that kids are very comfortable reading for dogs because dogs are so non-judgmental.
But then, a new study from the University of British Columbia found that 70% of third graders who are reading to a dog actually chose to keep reading beyond the initial assignment.
Only 40% of the kids that didn't have a dog there wanted to keep reading and these were kids who were challenged at reading above their current reading level.
That is a really good thing because we know these dogs are non-judgmental.
It gets these kids away from their laptops, away from the screen time and lets them have a little time with dogs.
Erickson says that it is something that's really important to incorporate.
"These are often therapy dogs, but you want to talk about a therapy dog, just having a dog you love in your life, or even a cat," Erickson said. "It's also good. You can have the kids when they're writing, instead of just typing on the old laptop, have them write a story about the dog and read that to the dog. There are many ways to incorporate it other."
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW.
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