Effects of music therapy on social skills of educable children with intellectual disability

Abstract

Music therapy and other music-based interventions are employed extensively in clinical treatments for children worldwide. This quasi-experimental research adopted a pretest-posttest control group design to analyze the effects of music therapy on the social skills of educable children with intellectual disability (ID). The statistical population included all female elementary students of special needs schools in Shiraz, Fars Province (Iran) in the academic year 2022–2023. The random sampling method was employed to select 80 students as the sample. They were then randomly assigned to a test group and a control group (n= 40 per group). The research data were collected using the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS)–Teacher Version (Gresham & Elliott) 15. The statistical analysis of data was performed using the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and the multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) in SPSS 26. The research questionnaire was completed as the pretest by all participants in both groups before the intervention. Then participants in the test group attended a 12-session music therapy intervention program, whereas those in the control group received no intervention. At the end of the intervention, all participants once again filled out the research questionnaire as the posttest. The pretest and posttest data were statistically analyzed using ANCOVA and MANCOVA in SPSS 26. According to the results, music therapy improved the social skills of educable children with ID. Analyzing the dimensions of social skills indicated that the greatest effect of music therapy on social skills was related to “cooperation”, whereas the smallest effects were left on “self-control” and “assertion”. In conclusion, music therapy is a group intervention that can positively affect social skills. Therefore, special needs schools are recommended to benefit from the potential of music therapy in specialized and clinical training interventions for children with ID.