Music Therapy for children with special needs: Current research and the links to developmental psychology and communicative musicality

Music therapy can meet the basic needs of children with special needs, such as behavioral problems, attention skills, social skills, emotional needs and intersubjective skills. In addition cognitive skills can be strengthened if the basic needs are fulfilled. The lecture gives an overview of the current music therapy research in the field, i.e. the results of effect studies as well as research focusing on how music therapy works or why we can see this effect. The developmental psychology, informed by the infant research and neuro-affective psychology, gives a ground to understand what development requires. As well it informs us about developmental steps that need to be enlarged, when working with children with special needs. According to neuro-affective psychology, arousal regulation is the basis for any social attention and therefore development, but the arousal regulation needs to be situated in a relational setting with an emotionally involved adult (Hart, 2006). Just like in early infant-parent interplay the development of inter-synchronicity is of great importance on this level. Moving further, playing with common vitality forms (Stern, 2010) and emotional attunement are central steps, followed by issues of more mental character forming the identity. Music can obviously be used in many ways here, but music as such cannot be seen as an isolated phenomenon when working in music therapy with children with special needs. The early infant-parent interplay is marked by musical traits, conceptualized by Malloch & Trevarthen (2009) as inborn ‘communicative musicality’. Communicative musicality provides the ground for early interplay and attachment, cognitive development and language, and characterizes human interplay throughout the life. For children who cannot join into a normal development music can be used to reinforce the communicative musicality; to augment the pulse of interaction in order to develop inter-synchronicity, develop turn-taking capacity, common history of interaction and social and emotional skills etc. (Holck, 2004; 2014). Within a developmental-relational approach to music therapy there is a strong focus on the therapist’s ability to relate and to follow the child’s lead instead of e.g. teaching musical skills as such. The last part of the lecture will focus on this in connection with issues on clinical assessment and evaluation of music therapy inside and outside music therapy (Wigram, 1999). References Hart, S. (2008). Brain, Attachment, Personality - An Introduction to Neuroaffective Development. E-book, London: Karnac Books. Holck, U. (2004). Interaction Themes in Music Therapy – Definition and Delimitation. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 13(1), 3-19. Holck, U. (2014). Kommunikativ musikalitet – et grundlag for musikterapeutisk praksis. I L.O. Bonde (red.), Musikterapi - teori, uddannelse, praksis, forskning. En håndbog om musikterapi i Danmark. (Kapitel 2.3.4). Århus: Klim. (Will be translated) Malloch, S. & Trevarthen, C. (Eds) (2009). Communicative Musicality. Exploring the basis of human companionship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, D. N. (2010). Forms of Vitality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wigram, T. (1999). Assessment Methods in Music Therapy: A Humanistic or Natural Science Framework? Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 8(1), 7-25.