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Research Assignment Young Adults with Developmental Disabilities Nicole Reikowski Ohio University

What genres or songs will work best with this population? What are a few ways to keep the groups attention during the session? What are the areas of need for music therapy sessions for this population? What are some experiences that would be of interest for this population?

Baker, F., Wigram, T., Stott, D., & McFerran, K. (2009). Therapeutic Songwriting in Music Therapy, Part II: Comparing the Literature with Practice across Diverse Clinical Populations. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy From this article, it explains how songwriting is a good experience to do with many different populations including the developmentally disabled. With many sites that I have been at, the clients often chime in and help make the song their own. The therapist played a more important role in lyric creation in work with aged care, ASD, and DD (Baker 42). With the developmentally disabled, they need more aid in I think it is important to lay out a theme to get ideas going, but the students might need assistance with different thoughts. My idea for applying this could be doing a songwriting experience at Athens Middle School. We could give them a theme like summer. We could assist by having them tell us what they are looking forward to doing during the summer. We could figure out a chord structure. According to the article, the 12-bar blues form was described in a number of studies, specifically with children and adolescents (Baker 35), so I would probably apply this structure since it is affective with this population.

Boso, M., Emanuele, E., Minazzi, V., Abbamonte, M., & Politi, P. (2007). Effect of LongTerm Interacive Music Therapy on Behavior Profile and Musical Skills in Young Adults with Severe Autism. Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine. From this article, it teaches us what a wonderful affect music therapy has especially in a longterm situation. The study was for 52 weeks with 60 minute music therapy sessions. The results showed that these eight young adults with severe cases of autism all had improvements in their musical skills and their BPRS ratings. After reading this, I felt like we needed to incorporate more variety each week at Athens Middle School. Although those with autism like to have a set routine, I feel like we should try and include singing, drumming, and keyboard experience every single week for the rest of this quarter. This studied used all three of these experiences each and every week. From seeing the results from this study, I hope to see improvements in their musicality and other skills like social or behavioral. Drumming is one we tend to neglect at Athens Middle School, and I would like to improve it throughout the rest of the weeks. After much thought, I think that a good experience would be passing the beat around the group. We could start off by doing a steady beat all together on our drums. Once everyone is consistently close to the beat for 10 seconds, we could begin the passing a beat. This could be passed clockwise in the group by hitting the drum once followed by the next client. The tempo would probably be slow at first, but it could speed up as they are more attentive to the experience.

Davis, W. B., Gfeller, K. E., Thaut, M. H., & Association, A. M. T. (2008). An introduction to music therapy theory and practice third edition. Silver Spring, MD: The American Music Therapy Association, Inc. This book teaches us the basics about music therapy of many types of disorders including developmental disorders. The main focus in any experience is to promote cooperation, sharing, taking turns, and learning appropriate ways to greet people. (Davis 98). The social area is a main area of need that this population needs to work on. These are things that we encounter on an everyday basis as well as the students. Being in a high school, they will interact with other students and teachers and need to know the proper way to do so. During our hello and goodbye, we make sure to incorporate appropriate greeting like handshakes, waves, and high five. One thing we need to work on in our sessions is sharing and teamwork. An idea for an experience could be where everyone plays different instruments, and have all of them pass it to the person next to them. I would try to get the number of seconds it takes to pass the instruments down to 10 or 15 seconds. De lEtoile, S. K. (2005). Teaching Music to Special Learners: Children with Disruptive Behavior Disorders. Music Educators Journal. At Athens Middle School, we have a few students who have ADHD. This article explained ways to make it easier and fluent for those who have ADHD. The author is a music therapist, but this article tends to talk more about how to apply this in a teaching aspect. What I found interesting in this article is how to keep the attention throughout a full session. It says to minimize downtime and make sure children have something meaningful to do during transitions (De lEtoile). This relates to our site since we keep our transitions quick, but make sure that there is

an incentive during that break of time. Our incentive is our picture schedule board. Once it is the end of an experience, we have one of the students come up and take it off of the board. We also use this as reinforcement when a client acts out but begins to participate or having good behavior. Our schedule board becomes a reward. Another subject this article sticks to is structure. We tend to try and have the same amount of experiences and have each session laid out for them before we begin. It states that they are more likely to succeed in a classroom that is predictable, consistent, and structured (De lEtoile). This would mean to have the same setting and same seating arrangement. Our schedule board is also very structured since it tells them what is next. Geist, K., McCarthy, J., Rodgers-Smith, A., & Porter, J. (2008) Integrating Music Therapy Services and Speech-Language Therapy Services for Children with Severe Communication Impairments: A Co-Treatment Model. Journal of Instructional Psychology. From this abstract, it emphasized on how important it is to collaborate with sign language and music therapy. According to the case study, there was improvement in the classroom setting. At Athens Middle School, we have currently observed once and had two sessions. I have seen that at least one client (Client D) signs and can understand sign language. I think it would be interesting to try and incorporate basic sign language into a song that doesnt have too many words for an experience. When You Wish upon a Star from Disneys Pinocchio would be a great example of a song that has a slow tempo and doesnt have too many words compared to other songs. If I am unable to learn a full song, I would at least like to learn a few phrases or words in sign language. I would like to learn stop, go, whats next?, and pay attention. This might

help to get more engagement from my clients since it is another form of language to get my point across. Moore, P. (2009). Confronting ADHD in the Music Classroom. Teaching Music This article teaches of ways to work with those with ADHD. We are certain that at least one of our clients has ADHD. This article brought tips to help simplify the process and make it easier for the student. Students with ADHD perform better when they are a) in close proximity to the teacher, b) sitting beside model students, and c) actively engaged in desirable activity (Moore). Client Z at Athens Middle School always sits in the seat next to the SMT, which is what is recommended for a better outcome. This article also brought to my attention that reinforcement plays a major role. The students, especially those with ADHD like to know when they are doing some simple things correctly. "Students need to hear that even the smallest accomplishment is noted (Moore). By applying what I have learned from this article to Athens Middle School, I hope that the students with ADHD are more engaged in our sessions. Quintin, E., Bhatara, A., Poissant, H., Fombonne, E., & Levitin, D. J. (2011). Emotion Perception in Music in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders. From this abstract, it states that during music they had the ability to recognize musical emotion as belonging to one of four categories (happy, sad, scared or peaceful) (Quintin). These teens were able to report what they were hearing with assurance and were almost on the same level as those who are typically developing.

I want to apply this to Athens Middle School since many of our students are autistic. I would like to play different recordings of each of these emotions and see how they respond. It would be interesting to see if each client could correctly get what I have categorized each song as. I have put thought into different pieces to play with this. I have thought about playing a sound clip of waves at the ocean for peaceful. For happy, I thought that an up-beat Disney song such as Hakuna Matata from the Lion King would be easy to classify. For a scary piece, I chose an instrumental Halloween song in minor such as the theme from Twilight Zone. Lastly, sad would be a slow concerto like Bach CPE Concerto in G. I might include other songs like an Irish jig for happy so that each client could answer what emotion each song brought out for them. I believe this would be a great experience since it really makes them think of emotion that this piece expresses for them. Schalkwijk, F. (1994) Music and People with Developmental Disabilities: Music Therapy, Remedial Music Making and Musical Activities. London, England: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. The chapter I mostly focused on was group treatment since it is vital for a school system. The main point that this chapter revolves around is social skills. They are extremely important when interacting in the group settings and when making decisions. One thing I need to do more of in music therapy sessions is give choices and having the students make a decision as to which instrument to play. Some examples that this book lists as problems with social skills are avoidance of contact or insufficient awareness of other peoples presence and a lack of actual faculties for communicating with other people, such as a speech impediment, a language disorder or a

physical disability which limits the possibilities for expression. (Schalkwijk 66). Social skills are quite necessary in schools since students need to communicate with fellow classmates, administration, and other authoritative figures.

References Baker, F., Wigram, T., Stott, D., & McFerran, K. (2009). Therapeutic Songwriting in Music Therapy, Part II: Comparing the Literature with Practice across Diverse Clinical Populations. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy Boso, M., Emanuele, E., Minazzi, V., Abbamonte, M., & Politi, P. (2007). Effect of LongTerm Interacive Music Therapy on Behavior Profile and Musical Skills in Young Adults with Severe Autism. Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine. Davis, W. B., Gfeller, K. E., Thaut, M. H., & Association, A. M. T. (2008). An introduction to music therapy theory and practice third edition. Silver Spring, MD: The American Music Therapy Association, Inc. De lEtoile, S. K. (2005). Teaching Music to Special Learners: Children with Disruptive Behavior Disorders. Music Educators Journal. Geist, K., McCarthy, J., Rodgers-Smith, A., & Porter, J. (2008) Integrating Music Therapy Services and Speech-Language Therapy Services for Children with Severe Communication Impairments: A Co-Treatment Model. Journal of Instructional Psychology. Moore, P. (2009). Confronting ADHD in the Music Classroom. Teaching Music Quintin, E., Bhatara, A., Poissant, H., Fombonne, E., & Levitin, D. J. (2011). Emotion Perception in Music in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders.

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Schalkwijk, F. (1994) Music and People with Developmental Disabilities: Music Therapy, Remedial Music Making and Musical Activities. London, England: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.