Researchers from the Hospital Research Centre of Brest in France compared children with autism whose families introduced a pet at age five with those families who had no pets, and families where children grew up with or without a pet.
Parents were asked to complete a survey used to diagnose autism when the children were five and then again at the time of the study. They also asked parents about the presence of pets in the family, their child’s relationship with the pet and whether the pet was bought especially for their child.
For the first study, they analysed 24 children with autism with an average age of 11. A dozen had received a dog, cat or rabbit after they turned five, while the rest had never had a pet.
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