The Exploration Of Theoretical Modal And Case Studies Of Improvisational Music Therapy On Children With Autism

Improvisational Music Therapy refers to the music therapy using improvisational experiences as the main therapeutic experiences of their clients during music therapy sessions. There are several improvisational music therapy modals widely used for children with special needs and especially improvisational ones for children with autism in the world. With the cooperation of the experts in the fields of Music and Special Education in China, some kinds of music therapy practice have been carried out with the clients of special children. However, few have the therapeutic meanings and even fewer is improvisational music therapy for children with autism.The purpose of present thesis is to draw an Improvisational Music Therapy modal right for the children with autism on the base of the relative literature and figure out the interventional method with the present situation in schools for children with mental retardation in China.There are three parts in this thesis:Part one introduces the background of this study, including the development of music therapy in the world and in China during the last half century, and the relationship between the children with autism and Music Therapy.Part two, as the main body of this study, is composed of two sub-parts, the theoretic description of the Improvisational Music Therapy modal called four-level modal for children with autism and the case studies. With the interventional method of the modal called improvisational-structured intervention designed for individual therapy for children with autism in the school for children with mental retardation, three case studies are carried out with the clients of children with autism on different levels, and qualitative and quantitative analyses are used on the results to determine the fitness and value of the modal, the interventional method, and different efforts of different types of music activities used during music sessions.Part three gives out the conclusions and discussions on the base of the results of intervention: 1) the four-level Improvisational Music TherapyModal is a theoretic modal which can be used to guide the practice of individual music therapy for children with autism in special schools; 2)the Improvisational-Structured intervention method is suitable and valuable; 3) the assessment tool Music Therapy Checklist is valuable as a tool of diagnosis and evaluation as well; and 4)different types of structured activities do have different effects on children with Autism. And relative suggestions on the future research and practice of this modal for children with autism are given as well.