Music therapy as a therapeutic tool in improving the social skills of autistic children

Abstract

Background: The Cochrane Collection reviews of randomized clinical trials (RCT) showed a favorable result of music therapy (MT) on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with a placebo treatment. Objective: This study focuses on accessing whether MT can improve the development of social skills of autistic children and to check if the effects of MT are long lasting. Materials and methods: This study was designed as a pre-test/post-test and follow-up among the autistic children. Fifty-four children with mild to severe autism were selected and assigned into two groups: active and passive. The children received MT for 3 months and the groups were followed-up for 3 months. The data were analyzed with IBM-SPSS-21 software using t test and the groups were compared by analysis of covariance. Results: The results of the MT intervention were mostly apparent in the following subscales—understanding/perspective-taking, initiating interactions, responding initiation, and maintaining interactions with others. The post-test covariance analysis results showed a significant increase in social skills’ scores (p < 0.05). Also, the t test results of the paired-sample revealed that the effectiveness of MT has been continual during the follow-up phase. Conclusions: The study illustrated that MT is an effective intervention in improving social skills of autistic children with steady effects. MT helped in developing a form of communication for these children which led to an improvement in their ability to understand, respond, and maintain their interaction with their peers.