The Effects of Music Therapy in Education

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In what ways does the music therapy approach increase the interactive verbal and non-verbal skills of students with moderate or severe autism in a structured classroom setting? Can prescribed use of music by a qualified person to effect positive changes in the psychological, physical, cognitive, or social functioning of individuals with health or educational problems? If so how can it improve students with autism, quality of life later in life. Music Therapy has been proven to be adequate mediation for emotional awareness shortfalls in autism. According to Zoller "using music with children, can expose them to a multi-sensory experience that enhances many skills and has a impact on their development of speech and language skills."(pg.273) And i believe music can be considered as a universal language, because cognitive components are responsible for non harmful environment, and music can help integrate social and academic progress among any individual.
In 1990, the United States Congress renamed the Education of the Handicapped Act to Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA, PL 101-476). One of the changes in the new law included the addition of autism to the list of disabilities that qualify a student for special education services in a public school (Armstrong & Darrow, 1999). Bunton-Pierce & Dunlap (1999), classified autism as developmental disorder, which affects a person's ability to communicate verbally and non verbally, whether its understanding the language, play, and interact with individuals. Leo Kanner diagnosed autism in 1943. Kanner approximated that autism occurs in about four of every ten thousand children (Kanner,1943). Autism is “the second most common developmental disability…even more common than Down sy...

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...motions. Therefore shows us that music therapy can be efficient witth kids in distinguishing recognition emotions. It is possible for a essential module of music can enormously help in the recognition of emotions like happy and sad in a musical context. It may not be the most powerful for bolstering recognition of other emotions so other forms of musical intervention might need to be incorporated in to show therapy progress. Therapeutic relationships between two people and encoding a certain pitch or tone in sessions, might have several advantages rather than, just promoting recognition of emotions. We could see long term effects like promotion to a multi-sensory experience by synchronizing sensory neurons that mark suboptimal functions in autism. In the long run, employing brain imaging tools to track the sensory neurons to understand the effects of music therapy.

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