Endpoint criterion of reading literacy is reading comprehension. The reader must have a positive attitude towards the act of reading, understand the text contents and the reading process for them to be able to comprehend it. The reading technique must be automated, and various cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies have to be understood and used. Students with reading-related learning disabilities can struggle in one or more areas mentioned above, caused by various individual and/or environmental factors. Primary deficits of automated decoding can affect the occurrence of additional, secondary deficits, for example reading anxiety or progressing reading comprehension issues. Additionally, students with specific learning disabilities can develop deficits in the area of metacognitive awareness, although they are able to compensate the primary deficits using acquired metacognitive strategies. Previous research suggests that the presence of a dog positively affects biological, psychological and social aspects of human development, thus programmes were launched integrating therapy dogs in the therapy process. One of such programmes is Dog Assisted Education, which integrates the work with a therapy dog into the educational process. Programmes where pupils read to the dogs were also initiated and their results suggest there is a reduction in reading anxiety among the participants. Based on D. Melanlioʇlu's programme, which tests the impact of metacognitive reading strategies on reading anxiety, and the principles of the Animal Assisted Education programme, we designed and completed a dog-assisted metacognitive reading strategy training in nine fifth-grade students with learning disabilities. We measured its effect on the knowledge and usage of metacognitive reading strategies, reading comprehension and reading anxiety. Knowledge of metacognitive reading strategies of participants after the completed training was statistically significantly higher compared to the pre-training assessment. The training did not have a statistically significant effect on reading comprehension or reading anxiety. There is a trend towards increased reading comprehension with enhanced knowledge of metacognitive reading strategies, however the sample size was too small to detect statistically significant differences. Overall, the results suggest that pupils acquired metacognitive reading strategies through systematic and explicit training of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. We hypothesize that with regular continued metacognitive strategy training accompanied by instructor-provided feedback during development, pupils would automatically use the acquired techniques, which would have a positive effect on reading comprehension and would reduce reading anxiety of the participants.
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