PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

 

e-ISSN 2231-8534
ISSN 0128-7702

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The Use of Music and Movement Therapy to Modify Behaviour of Children with Autism

See, C. M.

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 20, Issue 4, December 2012

Keywords: Children with autism, modify behaviour, music and movement therapy, target behaviour checklist

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Children with autism are often associated with behavioural problems such as being restless and fidgety; exhibiting tendencies to touch and hit people; being noisy (shouting or screaming); temper tantrums, being inattentive; non-compliance; spaced out; and body stiff. These behavioural patterns might be extreme and highly apparent or more subtle. Hence, music and movement therapy was developed to help improve the behaviours of children with autism. There were a total of 41 children who participated in the research, and they were divided into two groups and two sessions. Group 1 comprised of 18 children (5 girls and 13 boys). The age of the children in Group 1 ranged from 2 to 10 years old. Meanwhile, Group 2 comprised of 23 children (2 girls and 21 boys). The age of the participants in Group 2 ranged from 11 to 22 years old. The music therapy was carried out weekly and two sets of music therapy were used alternately for 10 months. The duration for each session was an hour. A Target Behaviour Checklist was also developed for the study purpose. The parents, music teachers and research assistant evaluated the child’s behaviour on an average of once a month for 10 months. One-way ANOVA and T-test were used to examine whether there was a significant change or improvement in the target behaviours among the two groups of children. The findings demonstrated that music and movement therapy has positive effects on the behaviours of these children, especially in helping children with autism to improve in restlessness, fidgety, temper tantrum and inattentive behaviours.

ISSN 0128-7702

e-ISSN 2231-8534

Article ID

JSSH-0410-2011

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