Resources & references

Read a systematic review examining the effects of music and music therapy in autistic individuals. Findings indicate a difference in how people with ASD perceive music, as compared to typically developping peers. They also found that the neurologic connections involved in music processing seem to be intact for autistic people, and that music therapy appears to have a positive impact on several areas of functioning for this population. 

Watch as a board-certified music therapist leads an individual session with an autistic man. Through instrument playing, singing, and songwriting, the client develops communication, strengthens social skills, and gains confidence.

Read an article exploring the concept of the neurodiversity movement and how it can be adopted in a music therapy context, written by an autistic music therapist. 

When Benji was born, he was like any other child... at around eighteen months his speech development started to regress and his parents noticed changes in his behaviour.

Benji was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of two and a half years old... and so the challenges for Benji and his family were now clear. Realising the long road ahead, Benji's parents were determined to give their son every opportunity for success in life. His music therapy journey begins here...  

This scoping review explores Bruscia’s (1987) clinical techniques for improvisational music therapy as they relate to music therapy in autism research to determine the most commonly used clinical techniques in music therapy with clients with autism. The work was undertaken as a preliminary step in a pilot study to explore how the techniques can be represented in terms of individual ways of playing, musical relationships; and how the use of the techniques impacts the participant’s experience of musical connection, influence, and expression.

Concordia University produced the "Children's Right to Music" documentary. The videos included in this documentary introduce music therapists interacting and using music with groups of children that are autistic or with some disabilities, in schools or community settings adapted to support their development and meet their needs.

Read a study exploring the perceptions of autistic individuals on the potential functions of echolalia in music therapy sessions. Results show a disconnect between the perception of these autistic participants and conventional literature written by non-autistic authors, which provide an opportunity for music therapists to limit their assumptions of autistic behaviour as described from the observer point of view. Notably, the connection between music and echolalia is also discussed, which may be of particular interest to music therapists.

Music therapy is used to help autistic children address develpmental goals. Watch registered music therapists lead an individual session with a child using instrument playing, improvisation, and singing to enhance communication and language development.

Watch how certified music therapist Catherine Vesic helps Sam learn to use his voice to express himself and connect with the adults around him.

The purpose of this two-part study was to confirm the relationship between dyadic drum playing and social skills and to further develop a rhythm-mediated music therapy intervention for improving the social skills of children with ASD. Participants showed greater engagement in joint action following the intervention. This study supports potential benefit of the rhythm-mediated intervention using dyadic drum playing and provides preliminary evidence strengthening its use in the social domain for individuals with ASD.

Read a study which looks at the impact of combining 5 music approaches (Orff-Schulwerk, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, the Five Elements of Traditional Chinese Music, the Mozart Effect and Neurologic Music Therapy) into one integrative music therapy approach. This approach was designed to target attention, emotional self-regulation and social interaction in 5-6 year old children with diagnoses of severe autism spectrum disorder. Results found significant improvements in all tested domains. 

This article suggests a provisional paradigm shift from disability as pathology, to disability as neurodiversity: this has the potential to productively resituate the epistemological orientations of music therapy, both as a field of inquiry and a domain of practice. Drawing from their own work on the ethnomusicology of autism, as well as from research and writings in disability studies and autistic self-advocacy, they propose that the relativistic foundations of ethnomusicology offer a potentially useful alternative and complement to the principally treatment-directed foundations of music therapy.