Changes in Child Engagement as Parent-Child Dyads Participate in Parent Mediated Music Intervention

Abstract

Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) are a promising intervention to support social behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (Schreibman et al., 2015). NDBIs can be administered as parent-mediated NDBIs, incorporating the parent into the therapy. Music can also be included because of characteristics such as its predictable nature, to possibly support social interactions among autistic children. Parent-mediated music NDBIs combine NDBI strategies, parent-coaching, and music, but there is a lack of research on this novel intervention (Liu et al., 2021; Nevill et al., 2018). Through this single-case design study, we investigate the impact of Parent-Mediated Music Intervention (PMMI) on four young autistic children by observing changes in the children’s engagement states before and after a 12-week intervention. Parents were informed to record 10 minutes of a play session with their child in a setting and with toys that represent a typical play session. The 10 minute free-play sessions were split into 5 second intervals. Each interval was coded using an engagement scheme adapted from Adamson et al. (2004), Bottema-Beutel et al. (2014), and Ingersoll et al., (2017). Visual analysis, the primary method of this study, found that three out of four children increased in their social engagement and decreased in their object engagement during follow-up compared to baseline. The one child who did not display changes in engagement did exhibit improvements in the quality of social engagement at follow-up compared to baseline. In addition, it was found that an increase in the parents’ usage of NDBI-aligned strategies predicted increases in the children’s social engagement. This study provides promising results for the feasibility of PMMI for both the parents and the children. Future research could determine if the results of this study generalize to a standardized set of toys and compare PMMI to a non-musical intervention to isolate the impact of music on parents and children in intervention settings.