Effects of Music Therapy on Joint Attention in Children with Autism

Joint attention, the ability to selectively attend to an object of mutual interest, is a critical skill that develops early in life and consequentially affects future social-cognitive skills, social-emotional skills, and language development. Music therapy is one effective method for increasing interpersonal understanding, joint motivation, and cooperative skills. Music therapy interventions have been used with children diagnosed with autistic disorder for the past fifty years. The present study examines the effectiveness of music therapy intervention on development of joint attention behaviors in children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder both within treatment and as reported by parents outside of treatment. Improvement in joint attention behaviors was noted in 70% of participants after only 8 individual music therapy session. Results indicated that the addition of music therapy intervention to a child's treatment program can have positive outcomes and may be an effective method for increasing joint attention skills in some children with autism.