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

This review looked at 47 studies about autism and animal therapy. Most research treats animals as tools to 'fix' autistic children's social behaviors. The authors suggest this approach is problematic because it views autism as something that needs to be normalized rather than accepting autism as a natural form of human diversity. They recommend recognizing that animals can serve multiple purposes in a child's life beyond just therapy goals.

This critical interpretive synthesis examined 47 articles exploring representations of autism and human-animal interactions (HAI) in health sciences literature. The review found that animals were predominantly portrayed as therapeutic objects designed to address 'problematic' behaviors and social 'deficits' from a biomedical perspective. HAI interventions primarily focused on normalizing autistic behaviors rather than recognizing diverse forms of sociality. The authors highlight an alternative perspective that views autistic sociality as a valid form of human diversity rather than a deficit requiring correction.

The synthesis reveals limited explicit discussion of relational and social aspects of HAI despite their presence in the literature.

Practitioners should consider recognizing multiple purposes of animals in autistic children's lives beyond therapeutic normalization goals. This challenges current biomedical approaches to HAI and suggests embracing autistic sociality as valid human diversity rather than viewing it as deficit requiring correction through animal-assisted interventions.

This is a critical interpretive synthesis rather than a systematic review, which may introduce selection bias. The analysis is based on representations in literature rather than direct measurement of intervention effectiveness. Sample size of reviewed articles is modest at 47 studies.

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.