Lisa Maria Glenk

• PhD, MSc
• Lecturer at University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

While ostracism constitutes a social stressor with negative effects on physical and mental health, social inclusion seems to increase resilience. This may be true not only for face-to-face settings, but also for computer-mediated interactions. Hence, this study examined the differences between ostracism and social inclusion in real-life or Virtual...

Numerous studies have demonstrated that acute psychological stress, induced by the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) paradigm, affects salivary cortisol secretion and self-reported stress measures including anxiety. Allergy has been related to altered cortisol responsiveness and increased stress vulnerability. Here, we investigated acute stress respo...

Blindness has previously been associated with impaired quality of life (QOL). Guide dogs may not only support blind people in their independency, but also facilitate social relationships and overall health. This study sought to investigate whether blind people from Austria with a guide dog, when compared with blind people without a guide dog, diffe...

It is accepted that social stress in relation to confrontation and competition can elicit behavioural and hormonal changes in social mammals. These effects have, however, been less frequently studied among female-female interactions. In the present study female-female confrontation experiments were carried out to monitor socio-positive and agonisti...

Research into the effects of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) has primarily addressed human health outcomes. In contrast, only few publications deal with the therapy dog experience of AAIs. This paper provides an overview on potential welfare threats that therapy dogs may encounter and presents the results of a review of available studies on we...

Children with psychosocial, developmental or physical impairments benefit from equine-assisted therapy (EAT) in multiple ways. However, to date, the animal perspective of such interventions has received comparatively less scientific dedication. Thus, heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) of seven therapy horses that lived in an open stab...

The body of research into the effects of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) on human health outcomes has been rapidly growing over the past decades. In contrast, scientific efforts to address the animal perception of AAIs have been comparably scarce. Also, early studies merely focused on therapy dogs or horses, as they were and continue to be the...

The prevalence of mental health disorders, driven by current global crises, is notably high. During the past decades, the popularity of dogs assisting humans with a wide spectrum of mental health disorders has significantly increased. Notwithstanding these dogs’ doubtless value, research on their legal status, certification processes, training and...

Background: Virtual reality (VR)-based biofeedback is a relatively new intervention and is increasingly being used for the treatment of anxiety disorders. This is the first research synthesis regarding effects and efficacy of this novel mode of treatment. Method: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the VR biofeedback literature...

During the past decade, the field of human-animal interaction(s) research has been characterized by a significant increase in scientific findings. These data have contributed to our current understanding of how humans may benefit from contact with animals. However, the animal experience of these interactions is still an under-researched area. This...

Background Although the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) constitutes a valid paradigm for social stress induction, less is known about the effects of a virtual reality (VR) TSST on short- and long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic-adreno-medullar (SAM) axis responses. Hence, this study set out to evaluate reactivity and...

Lisa Maria Glenk analysiert die Spezifika der Mensch-Hund-Beziehung hinsichtlich ihrer Passung auf TGI sowie die Auswirkungen auf die einbezogenen Hunde. Sie thematisiert zum Beispiel die von einer üblichen vertrauten Hund-Halter_in-Bindung abweichende ‚Fremdheit‘ der Hund-Klient_in-Beziehung in vielen tiergestützten Maßnahmen. Aus einer ersten Ana...

Erfolgreiche tiergestützte Interventionen in Justizvollzuganstalten sind an verschiedene Voraussetzungen gebunden, sowohl für Klient_innen, als auch für die Einrichtungen und alle beteiligten Personen. In diesem Beitrag des Bandes werden Gelingensbedingungen und zentrale Maximen tiergestützter Arbeit (am Beispiel hundegestützter Interventionen) von...

Besides the pervasive controversy of animal experimentation in society, ethics and science, the human experimenter side of laboratory animal studies is a relatively underrepresented topic in human-animal interaction research. Few studies have addressed scientists' stress responses to animal experiments. The main aim of this study was to assess work...

The practice of implementing dogs into therapeutic environments is an emerging field. Despite the increasingly growing scientific interest on human health outcomes, research efforts into the canine perspective of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) have been scarce. The demands therapy dogs encounter during their performance in therapeutic environ...

The aim of the study was to analyse interaction processes in equine-assisted therapy (EAT) sessions with ten female clients in the period of emerging adulthood with intellectual disability (ID). Heart rate (HR), heart rate variability and salivary cortisol levels have been analysed in humans and horses before, during and after a standardised therap...

Background & Aims The effects of acute stress on allergic symptoms are little understood. The intention of this clinical study was to study the effects of acute stress and related mediators in allergic rhinitis (AR), taking the wheal and flare reaction in skin prick testing (SPT) as a readout. Methods 19 healthy and 21 AR patients were first subje...

Scheme of the study. Participants arrived 15 min before the test onset (time point 0). Blood samples (B1, B2) and saliva samples (S1-S5) were taken, and skin prick tests (SPT1 and SPT2) was performed at indicated time points, before (pre) or after (post) Trier Social Test (TSST). The whole procedure was accompanied by psychological questionnaires o...

Changes in SPT wheal and flare diameters to histamine pricks upon the TSST. a) allergics (n = 14) and b) non-allergics (n = 11) were classified as stress responders based on their salivary cortisol levels. Individual wheal (left hand) or flare areas (right panels) are shown (y-axis in mm2), before (Pre) or after TSST (Post). Black lines indicate su...

Individual plasma levels of mediators before and after the TSST test. a) adrenaline, b) serotonin, c) PAF and d) prostaglandin D2. Grey: mean values of results before TSST, black: mean values after TSST; y -axis: levels of mediators/ml. (TIF)

Stress is a complex phenomenon and commonly referred to as a range of bodily reactions toward a potentially harmful stimulus that may disturb homeostasis. It is important to understand that stress impacts psychological, physiological, immunological, and behavioral functions that not only require individual coping strategies but affect disease onset...

In light of the rather limited ecological validity of paradigms traditionally used for social stress research, the current paper set out to introduce virtual analogues of the Cyberball-Game (Williams 2007) and the Trier Social Stress Test (Kirschbaum, Pirke, and Hellhammer 1993). Both were tested in samples of healthy adults using salivary cortisol...

Public speaking is a well-known psychosocial stress to occur in social-evaluative situations. This study examined self-reported, autonomic and endocrine stress responses to a 5-min public speaking task. Participants were asked to present either in front of i) a real audience, or ii) a virtual audience or iii) an empty virtual lecture hall. Thus, th...

Animal-assisted activities (AAAs) are mainly carried out in institutions. The aim of this prospective pilot study was to assess the willingness of patients with cardiac implanted electronic devices (IEDs) to participate in AAA. The sample included 75 ambulatory patients (18 females, M age = 69 years), who attended an outpatient clinic for control o...

Serious games are supposed to instigate engagement and, in turn, improve learning. High engagement is frequently connected with a positive affective state and a high flow state. However, the alleged link between a learner’s affective state, his/her flow state and learning outcomes has not been investigated in detail in the context of serious games....

Beneficial effects of human-animal contact on human health have contributed to the wide distribution of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs). While considerable effort has been devoted to the study of human welfare during AAIs, potential effects on therapy animals have been addressed less frequently. The aim of this study was to determine baseline...

Beneficial effects of human-animal contact on human health have contributed to the wide distribution of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs). While considerable effort has been devoted to the study of human welfare during AAIs, potential effects on therapy animals have been addressed less frequently. The aim of this study was to determine baseline...

Playfulness is hard to define; yet almost everyone is familiar with it. The progress of technology (e.g. virtual reality, biofeedback) offers many possibilities for clinical psychologists of integrating playful elements in therapy and treatment (serious games). This paper addresses these possibilities as well as problematic aspects (side effects) o...

In socially-living animals, social enrichment enhances spatial learning and memory while separation from conspecifics can severely impair these abilities. In the present work, guinea pigs were kept in isolation or cohabitated in heterosexual pairs and then subjected to a labyrinth task. Latency-time to bait, error-rate, amount of movement and pre-...