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MUSIC THERAPY AND LANGUAGE FOR THE AUTISTIC CHILD

2007-12-17T21:42:00.000-08:00

Written by Myra J. Staum, Ph.D., RMT-BC
Director and Professor of Music Therapy
Willamette University, Salem, Oregon

Music Therapy is the unique application of music to enhance personal lives by creating positive changes in human behavior. It is an allied health profession utilizing music as a tool to encourage development in social/ emotional, cognitive/learning, and perceptual-motor areas. Music Therapy has a wide variety of functions with the exceptional child, adolescent and adult in medical, institutional and educational settings. Music is effective because it is a nonverbal form of communication, it is a natural reinforcer, it is immediate in time and provides motivation for practicing nonmusical skills. Most importantly, it is a successful medium because almost everyone responds positively to at least some kind of music.

The training of a music therapist involves a full curriculum of music classes, along with selected courses in psychology, special education, and anatomy with specific core courses and field experiences in music therapy. Following coursework, students complete a six-month full time clinical internship and a written board certification exam. Registered, board certified professionals must then maintain continuing education credits or retake the exam to remain current in their practice.

Music Therapy is particularly useful with autistic children owing in part to the nonverbal, non threatening nature of the medium. Parallel music activities are designed to support the objectives of the child as observed by the therapist or as indicated by a parent, teacher or other professional. A music therapist might observe, for instance, the child's need to socially interact with others. Musical games like passing a ball back and forth to music or playing sticks and cymbals with another person might be used to foster this interaction. Eye contact might be encouraged with imitative clapping games near the eyes or with activities which focus attention on an instrument played near the face. Preferred music may be used contingently for a wide variety of cooperative social behaviors like sitting in a chair or staying with a group of other children in a circle.

Music Therapy is particularly effective in the development and remediation of speech. The severe deficit in communication observed among autistic children includes expressive speech which may be nonexistent or impersonal. Speech can range from complete mutism to grunts, cries, explosive shrieks, guttural sounds, and humming. There may be musically intoned vocalizations with some consonant-vowel combinations, a sophisticated babbling interspersed with vaguely recognizable word-like sounds, or a seemingly foreign sounding jargon. Higher level autistic speech may involve echolalia, delayed echolalia or pronominal reversal, while some children may progress to appropriate phrases, sentences, and longer sentences with non expressive or monotonic speech. Since autistic children are often mainstreamed into music classes in the public schools, a music teacher may experience the rewards of having an autistic child involved in music activities while assisting with language.

It has been noted time and again that autistic children evidence unusual sensitivities to music. Some have perfect pitch, while many have been noted to play instruments with exceptional musicality. Music therapists traditionally work with autistic children because of this unusual responsiveness which is adaptable to non-music goals Some children have unusual sensitivities only to certain sounds. One boy, after playing a xylophone bar, would spontaneously sing up the harmonic series from the fundamental pitch. Through careful structuring, syllable sounds were paired with his singing of the harmonics and the boy began incorporating consonant-vowel sounds into his vocal play. Soon simple 2-3 note tunes were played on the xylophone by the therapist who modeled more complex verbalizations, and the child gradually began imitating them.

Since autistic children sometimes sing when they may not speak, music therapists and music educators can work systematically on speech through vocal music activities. In the music classroom, songs with simple words, repetitive phrases, and even repetitive nonsense syllables can assist the autistic child's language. Meaningful word phrases and songs presented with visual and tactile cues can facilitate this process even further. One six-year old echolalic child was taught speech by having the therapist/teacher sing simple question/answer phrases set to a familiar melody with full rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment The child held the objects while singing:

Do you eat an apple? Yes, yes.
Do you eat an apple? Yes, yes.
Do you eat an apple? Yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes.

and

Do you eat a pencil? No, no.
Do you eat a pencil? No, no.
Do you eat a pencil? No, no.
No, no, no.

Another autistic child learned noun and action verb phrases . A large doll was manipulated by the therapist/teacher and a song presented:

This is a doll.
This is a doll.
The doll is jumping.
The doll is jumping.
This is a doll.
This is a doll.

Later, words were substituted for walking, sitting, sleeping, etc. In these songs, the bold words were faded out gradually by the therapist/teacher. Since each phrase was repeated, the child could use his echolalic imitation to respond accurately. When the music was eliminated completely, the child was able to verbalize the entire sentence in response to the questions, "What is this?" and "What is the doll doing?"

Other autistic children have learned entire meaningful responses when both questions and answers were incorporated into a song. The following phrases were sung with one child to the approximate tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and words were faded out gradually in backward progression. While attention to environmental sounds was the primary focus for this child, the song structure assisted her in responding in a full, grammatically correct sentence:

Listen, listen, what do you hear? (sound played on tape)
I hear an ambulance.

(I hear a baby cry.)
(I hear my mother calling, etc.)

Autistic children have also made enormous strides in eliminating their monotonic speech by singing songs composed to match the rhythm, stress, flow and inflection of the sentence followed by a gradual fading of the musical cues. Parents and teachers alike can assist the child in remembering these prosodic features of speech by prompting the child with the song.

While composing specialized songs is time consuming for the teacher with a classroom full of other children, it should be remembered that the repertoire of elementary songs are generally repetitive in nature. Even in higher level elementary vocal method books, repetition of simple phrases is common. While the words in such books may not seem critical for the autistic child's survival at the moment, simply increasing the capacity to put words together is a vitally important beginning for these children.

For those teachers whose time is limited to large groups, almost all singing experiences are invaluable to the autistic child when songs are presented slowly, clearly, and with careful focusing of the child's attention to the ongoing activity. To hear an autistic child leave a class quietly singing a song with all the words is a pleasant occurrence. To hear the same child attempt to use these words in conversation outside of the music class is to have made a very special contribution to the language potential of this child.

For more information about music therapy, contact the National Association for Music Therapy, 8455 Colesville Road, Suite 930, Silver Spring, MD 20910, U.S.A.

From : http://www.autism.org

Music, Mind, and Health

2007-12-17T04:15:00.000-08:00

Adam Boulanger, Graham Grindlay, and Nick Knouf

Music affects us in ways that are more direct and substantial than just about any other stimuli. But how, and why is music so meaningful? Furthermore, can the unique status of music be leveraged for the betterment of our health? Our interest in the new field of music, mind and health will develop the technologies and research required to answer these questions.

We are currently working in several different areas of music augmentation, with both healthy and pathological individuals. For more detail about our current thinking regarding how new music technologies are implied for research and treatment, click on any of the following categories or selected projects.

Current Directions in Music, Mind, and Health:

A focus on Alzheimer's Disease
A focus on Autism
A focus on Emotion
A focus on Performance

Selected Projects in Music, Mind and Health:

from : http://www.media.mit.edu

Playing With Sounds in Your Head

2007-11-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

Katie Dean 05.01.04 | 2:00 AM

The sound of fingernails scraping a dusty chalkboard makes a listener immediately squirm and cover her ears.

One company believes that there is real science behind such a reaction to sounds. NeuroPop is integrating neurosensory algorithms into music to create a certain mood and evoke more intense responses from listeners. The company hopes to market its compositions to the movie industry and video game companies.

Its first CD, Overload: The Sonic Intoxicant, contains tracks ranging from "chill out," meditative music to a piece that generates a feeling of motion sickness in some.

"I want to do something that messes with people's heads," said Lance Massey, a longtime composer of commercials and the creative director of NeuroPop.

"We've gone through all the data to find what kind of sounds or signal gets a specific response, and then we can merge it back into an existing piece of music or sound," said Seth Horowitz, chief technology officer of NeuroPop and an assistant research professor at Stony Brook University in New York.

Horowitz said that if he wants to get a certain response from a listener to a piece of music, he looks at what part of the brain is responsible for the desired response. Then, using his own data or other published literature, he looks to find what kind of stimulus makes that part of the brain active.

Audio

Hear a sample from NeuroPop's CD, Overload: The Sonic Intoxicant.
Listen to the ear-brain toy Ghost Room.

"By analyzing the connectivity pattern of parts of the brain sensitive to sound with other non-auditory parts of the brain -- parts of the brain responsible for attention or fear, for example -- you can put together a library of sounds that will evoke these specific responses," he said.

Horowitz said he hasn't published any studies related to his work yet, but expects to do so in about a year.

In the past, the company tried to work with advertisers, but to no success.

"In hindsight, it's a shady area," Massey said. "They are already pummeling us with manipulative messages and they really don't need much more help."

Dr. Mark Tramo, director of The Institute for Music & Brain Science, isn't convinced that NeuroPop's product is supported by solid science.

"As a rule of thumb, until the empirical work is done -- the unbiased, experimental work -- anything that's sold could be snake oil," Tramo said. "First comes the (research and development), then comes the product."

The connection between music and neuroscience is a field that is ripe for study, Tramo said. So far, most of the evidence has been anecdotal.

"Humans, from infancy, acquire music as effortlessly as they acquire language," he said. "By understanding how the brain processes music, we will understand how the auditory system, how memory, how development, how learning, how talent, how creativity, how all of this works in the brain."

Tramo's institute is gearing up to study the effects of music on anxiety and depression in cancer patients and critically ill infants in intensive care units. The institute plans to conduct rigorous clinical trials similar to the types of trials done when drugs are tested for Food and Drug Administration approval.

Despite the skepticism about the physiological effects of NeuroPop's music, listeners like what they hear and see potential for interesting developments.

"It's got a really beautiful unusual texture that you can hear," said Lucas Gonze, creator of Webjay, who has added a clip of the piece to one of his playlists.

"I can imagine NeuroPop's algorithms making bright instruments fade into the mix, intensifying climaxes, giving woodwinds a more cutting sound, and a lot of other musical effects," he said.

From: http://www.wired.com