Introduction:

for people with cognitive disabilities, writing and reading processes are a vital part of their life Project. Based on communication and cognition abilities, which are unavoidable to promote interrelationships with the world, these allow to develop skills needed for social, education, and work inclusion processes.

Objective:

the objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of an interdisciplinary intervention between equine-assisted therapy and speech-language pathology for writing and reading development in adolescents and adults with cognitive disabilities.

Materials and methods:

a quasi-experimental study was conducted to assess 34 cognitively disabled students between 11 and 42 years old from a special education institution using a literacy assessment instrument called "Material for clinical research on language by Martha Espeleta" before and after the speech-language intervention supported by equine-assisted therapy. Statistical analysis was made using Stata v13 and descriptive analysis using measures of central frequency and tendency. Bivariate analysis was made using McNemar's test.

Results:

52,94 of individual were women. Average age was 22 years old, ranging from 11 to 42 years old. Both spontaneous-oriented writing and spontaneous sensoperceptive-supported writing abilities presented an important statistical change (p<0,05).

Conclusions:

individuals intervention is effective to improve certain literacy skills from an automatic reading at syllable level to a reintegrated syllable level. It also helps in spontaneous writing (composition) at a secondary level for enumerative description outlining a literary start.

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