Autistic sociality: challenging representations of autism and human-animal interactions

The objective of this synthesis research was to explore representations of autism and human-animal interactions (HAI) in the health sciences literature and the implications for autistic children and their families.

Guided by critical interpretive synthesis methods proposed by Dixon-Woods et al. (2006), we synthesized and examined how autism and HAI were described in the health sciences literature and explored assumptions and goals underlying HAI as an intervention.

Across 47 reviewed articles, animals were represented as therapeutic objects whose purpose from a biomedical perspective was to address "problematic" behaviours and "deficits" in social functioning and development. HAI was employed as a therapy to address improvements in these problematic behaviours in the majority of studies. Relational and social aspects of HAI were present but not explicitly discussed. An alternative perspective proposed by Olga Solomon positioned autistic sociality as one form of diverse human socialities that can be embraced, rather than held problematic and in need of being normalized.

Implications for HAI in rehabilitation include recognizing the multiple purposes of animals in a child's life, not only the therapeutic goal of normalizing functioning.