| Sumario: | The article focuses on the analysis of child-dog play behavior in child psychiatry. During the last few decades, researchers have increasingly concentrated on investigating these processes, underlining the importance of nonverbal communication for both healthy and mentally ill individuals. Nonverbal signals are at least as significant as verbal signals, particularly for expressing and regulating emotional states. They are difficult to influence consciously, and so are significantly less likely to be subjected to the communicator's deliberate and purposeful manipulation than are verbal communication signals. Nonverbal signals can help the communication partner to interpret information which is verbally transmitted, but they can also take place without verbal communication. Because of this, it is possible to observe genuine, direct interactions between a child, for example, and an animal, to obtain diagnostically valuable information about the child. Dogs are particularly useful for this purpose. A large number of field studies report significant behavioral changes in different individuals when animals are present. Several authors reported an improvement in social interaction, particularly in therapies using dogs.
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