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Feb. 27 - Faux Fido Eases Loneliness in Nursing Homes

A sophisticated robotic dog could be a good companion for your dog-loving grandmother who can’t care for a living pet, a new Saint Louis University study suggests.

The researchers compared how residents of three nursing homes interacted with Sparky, a living, medium-sized gentle mutt, and Aibo, a doggie robot once manufactured by Sony that looks like a three-dimensional cartoon.

“The most surprising thing is they worked almost equally well in terms of alleviating loneliness and causing residents to form attachments,” says William A. Banks, MD, professor of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University. “For those people who can’t have a living pet but who would like to have a pet, robotics could address the issue of companionship,” Banks says.

To test whether residents connected better with Sparky or Aibo, researchers divided a total of 38 nursing home residents into three groups. All were asked questions to assess their level of loneliness. One group saw Sparky once a week for 30 minutes, another group had similar visits with Aibo, and a control group saw neither furry nor mechanical critter.

The residents who received visits from real and artificial pooches felt less lonely and more attached to their canine attention-givers than those who got visits from neither. There was no statistical difference between whether the real or robotic dog did a better job easing loneliness and fostering attachments.

“There is a lot of loneliness in nursing homes and animal-assisted therapy – whether from a dog or a robot – is one answer for addressing that,” he says.

“This health companion could follow a person in his home, giving reminders on when to take medication or sending out an alert when a person has suddenly gone from a vertical position to a horizontal one,” Banks says.

Source: Journal of the American Medical Directors Association

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