Horses may help children with learning difficulties

A Galway woman is conducting a study on children with dyspraxia to see how interacting with horses can benefit the condition.

Caren Hession is a Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) research student and GMIT graduate and is conducting the study on 120 children with dyspraxia as part of her PhD.

She hopes to achieve a greater understanding of how Equine Therapy benefits the individual. She plans to use this knowledge to design a more accessible and effective form of therapeutic engagement.

The experiment will take place in Limerick, Dublin, and Galway, and Ms Hession is searching for 40 children aged between six and 15 years, with a primary diagnosis of dyspraxia to take part in Galway.

Dyspraxia is a development coordination disorder where symptoms include language and learning difficulties.

The study will be broken up into three parts. In Galway’s St Michael School Boys school in Mervue, Ms Hession will study the ways in which visual art – visual art classes, the movement of the horse and its unique, human-like gait – can benefit the individual, while in Limerick her research will be based on the noises of the animals. In Dublin, her experiment will include horse-riding lessons.

Starting in September, this is her second equine study, and will be the largest research study of its kind in Ireland.

Her first experiment, conducted on 40 children with Dyspraxia, took place from January to March of this year and revealed that the motion of a horse made significant improvements in cognition, mood arousal and ambulation.

Children in this study participated in two 30-minute audio-visual screenings and six one-hour horse-riding lessons over the course of eight weeks.

“The riding lessons consisted of a series of games and exercises devised to assist with balance and engagement while riding. Children were assessed [before and after] the 8-week study period and all information remained anonymous,” said Ms Hession who is from Athenry now living in Oranmore.

Following the positive results of her first experiment, she hopes to investigate “the extent to which audio-visual perception alone might contribute positive cognitive, social or emotional value to children with special needs, thereby extending the beneficial effects of Equine therapy sessions, both temporally and spatially.”

Equine therapy is the use of horses for the physical, mental, emotional and behavioural development of an individual. But despite the growing recognition of this therapy, there is very little scientific research to support the activities in this field.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.