Increasing Social Responsiveness in Children with Autism: a Comparison of Music and Non-Music Interventions

Background: Many children with autism have difficulty engaging in social interaction with others. One intervention that has been used to increase social skills in children with autism is music therapy, an established healthcare profession that uses music to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals of all ages (American Music Therapy Association, 1999).

Objectives: Because music therapy is being used on an increasing basis for children with autism, this study sought to determine the effect of this intervention on the social responsive behaviours of a child with autism. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the child would engage in a greater number of social responsive behaviours and fewer social avoidance behaviours in the music therapy condition than in the non-music condition in which the same activities were done, but without music.
Methods: This research used a single subject design with alternating treatments to evaluate the effects of both music and non-music interventions on the social responsive behaviours of a preschool child with autism. The non-music and music interventions were designed and implemented in an identical fashion the only difference being the addition of music. Each intervention used toys (e.g., non-music = maracas, stacking cups and plastic animals; music = car, drum, and ball) as a means to offer the child opportunities to engage in social responsive behaviours using either a spoken script or a sung melody. Social responsive behaviours were defined as eye contact, imitation, and turn-taking whereas social avoidant behaviours where defined as pushing the toy away, pushing the adult away and moving away, all which were measured in terms of frequency. An equal number of both interventions were randomly conducted with the child in an alternating manner and after a total of 12 treatment sessions.
Results: Results indicated that the music therapy intervention produced a higher frequency of each of the three social responsive behaviours. Furthermore, no instances of social avoidant behaviours occurred in the music condition. As a result, the music intervention was then applied to the non-music toys and over the course of 7 additional sessions, higher frequencies of the three social responsive behaviours were observed. Conclusions: It is suggested that because music was a preferred activity, the participant was motivated to engage in more social responsive behaviours during the music intervention. The fact that music therapy appears to be motivating for a young child with autism suggests the importance of incorporating music therapy interventions into programming for pre-school children with autism