Music Therapy and Speech-Language Pathology for Autistic Children

Abstract

Children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are communicatively impaired, with particular difficulties with pragmatics, the component of language that involves the social understanding of what to say and what not to say in varying situations. There is a long-standing link between music and speech, and speech-related goals are prominent in music therapy for autistic children.

The present study is a proposal of an experiment to determine if there is a difference in the efficacy of speech-language pathology, music therapy with language goals, and collaboration between the two fields. The author hypothesizes that a collaboration of music therapy and speech-language pathology will be more effective than either practice alone; it is also hypothesized that if used separately, music therapy and speech-language pathology are similar in efficacy.