Family-Centered Music Therapy Case Study

Using family centered music therapy (FCMT), research conducted by Thompson, McFerran and Gold (2014) used a randomized controlled design to investigate the effect of FCMT and social engagement between the child and parents within active music making. Twenty-three children with severe ASD received either 16 weeks of FCMT in addition to their early intervention programs, or received their early intervention programs only. Results indicated improvements in quality of social interaction in the home and community and the strength of parent-child relationship. Researchers indicated that FCMT might provide a motivating social environment for the children, fostering interactions between child and parent that potentially could continue beyond the therapy

For example, Pasiali (2004) introduced the prescriptive song protocol as an individual intervention conducted in the home environment. The researchers developed lyrics of each song by following the current guidelines for writing the text of social stories. "Social stories" is a strategy developed by special educators for modifying problematic behaviors of children with autism (Pasiali, 2004). In the three case studies, researchers used an ABAB reversal design with (A) represented baseline condition and (B) represented treatment condition. Each treatment session consisted of three music therapy applications that incorporated the prescriptive therapeutic song: listening, playing rhythmic instruments, and singing. Children's individual target behaviors were measured as dependent variables. The results from two of the three children failed to demonstrate significant improvement during treatment sessions. Combining with daily observation data reported by parents, the study suggests that the decreasing trend of the target behavior was combined with increased frequency of desirable social behaviors. There were several limitations associated with this study, including the small number of participants, rater bias, and the chosen ABAB reversal design, since behaviors in treatment condition might not be stable before the condition was reversed. The use of naturalistic environment,