Robotic Dogs Effective Companions for the Elderly? Doubt it.

Pets have long been known to alleviate loneliness in the elderly.  Now a study by researchers at Saint Louis University has discovered that a robotic dog is equally as effective as a real life dog.  The study compared how 38 residents of three nursing homes interacted with a medium-sized mutt and Sony’s robot dog, the Aibo. “The most surprising thing is they worked almost equally well in terms of alleviating loneliness and causing residents to form attachments,” said William A. Banks, M.D., professor of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University.

The blogs are all abuzz about how this is a big finding and a coming boon for helping the aged find companionship. I don’t buy it. The control groups only saw the pet or the robot dog for 30 minutes a week for seven weeks.  That’s not enough time for a person to create an attachment to a pet. Let the robot dog stay for more than two hours and see how lifelike it feels to the senior when the batteries run out.  No, I think that these lonely people were just simply grateful to have any visitor, metallic or warm and cuddly. Given time, the interest will wear off as they discover there is really no life in the robopet.  Not yet at least.

by Mark Fleming on February 27, 2008 in Companionship, Pets