Therapeutic listening is a novel concept that also provides musical stimulation for increasing various skills, as described by Frick and Montez (2005): Therapeutic listening uses developmental and sensory integration frameworks, uses the organized sound patterns inherent in music, uses music that is electronically altered to elicit a specific response, focuses on postural organization and breath regulation (core), and provides a catalyst for eliciting emergent skills (p. 2). Therapeutic listening is utilized for assisting with regulatory patterns, decreasing sensory modulation difficulties, refining of communication and affect and encouraging singing and vocalization (Frick & Montez, 2005). Both of these treatment techniques use …show more content…
Five participants were recruited for this study from a daycare center in a mid-western city. The age range of the participants was from two to four years of age. Two of the subjects 3 years old and 2.5 years old both had tentative diagnosis of ASD. The remaining three participants were typically developing students who were four years old. The study was conducted across 14 days which included two days of a peer training phase, followed by 12 days of the intervention phase. The peer training phase included session A, a social-communicative practice without music and session B, a social-communicative practice with music. Each condition lasted for three consecutive school days for twenty minutes each session across the span of the 14 days. Each session included four sections with specific time intervals assigned to each. Two ASD students and two typically developing students (TSD) participated in the study in the format of a group session, except session 5, 8, 9, and 12 in which only one subject with ASD and one TDS participated in the format of an individual session due to scheduling issues. All participants engaged in all sessions, except subject 2 with ASD who left the group early during sessions 10 and 11, and did not participate at all during session 12. The two protocols of the study demonstrated that the social-communicative sessions with or without music (baseline and treatment conditions) may be efficient ways to increase gestural imitation for children with