Psychology Annotated Bibliography

Effects of Short –Term Musical Training on Neural Encoding in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Laurie Schaalma

PSY 625 Biological Bases of Behavior

Instructor: Joshua Childers

August 14, 2017

Introduction

Having worked with autistic children, my eyes have been opened to the numerous benefits that musical and auditory training can have on a human brain. Moreover, my previous short term experience with people suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorder, a condition that affects the ability `of an individual to communicate and interact, made me wonder if training could be beneficial to this population. The tone of a human’s voice is determined by pitch, but, if one suffers from ASD, they would have some deficiency in their neural encoding and thus they might not be able to interpret the tone of a voice and understand the connotation of what is being said while communicating with other people. Some people with this ASD have been found to have neural encoding deficiency and therefore cannot follow pitch (Russo et al., 2008).

I would to use the grant to examine whether short-term musical training can have a positive impact on the neural response of children with ASD. The test will involve a short term musical instrument instruction to find out whether it can improve neural speech encoding at the same time improve the pitch of a child with ASD. The results will be a demonstration of whether short-term private music lessons would improve the neural encoding and pitch of these children.

Objectives

The specific study is supposed to:

1. Test the cortical responses of children with ASD to stimulus syllable

2. Compare a before and after musical lessons their response to the vowels with a changing pitch

3. Observe and record any changes that occur in the precision of the frequency discriminating task. The evoked cortical reactions by syllables like “ya” and “da” permit for the extraction of features of encoding like periodicity, onset and offset (Russo et al., 2009).

Background and Literature review

Research has indicated that auditory training is able to improve neural encoding in individuals (Kraus et al., 2014, Lim, 2010). Research has also indicated that the utilization of FastForWord software in auditory has made significant developments in receptive and expressive language processes in children with ASD (Ohare, 2012). In a research project carried out recently, six children with ASD took part and the five who completed the FastForWord training showed changes in the brainstem response time (Gillam, 2000).

Musical training has been proven to have multiple positive effects on the pitch and neural processing of children with ASD (Kraus and Chandrasekaran, 2010). Since individuals with ASD have deficits in pitch encoding, musical training can offer an effective pool to manage the deficiencies. Several case studies have indicated that music therapy can improve both interpretation and production of other people’s intonation (Toca and Miller, 1979). Music therapy has been proved to play a major role in assisting pitch learning.

According to Frith and Snowling, (1983), in younger people, long-term musical experiences improve their neural timing. Even though research has indicated that musical experience has a benefit on brainstem encoding in young people without disabilities, the same has not been demonstrated on the ones without ASD (Kellerman et al., 2005). Klin (2002) proposed that the repetitive nature of music and its technicality can be attractive to individuals with ASD. All of these studies persuade me to believe that this approach can be not only helpful but also effective to individuals with ASD.

Methodology

Six children with autism between the age of 7 and 12 will take part in a musical training while another six will be involved in the control group and will not get any training. All the children will have been medically diagnosed with autism and have no prior musical engagements. Data from the participants will be collected 3 times, before, during and after 8 weeks of musical training. Their brainstem reactions will be recorded by placing electrodes on their scalp, right earlobe, and the forehead. Owing to the particular nature of ASD, each participant will have their own study designed. Results will form the average of each group.

Preparation and Conclusion

Having worked in this area, my interest in this topic has grown. I would like to study how music can affect children with autism. My undergraduate research during the summer has helped me gain knowledge and experience to collect and analyze data.

This research will be an opportunity for me to put my class room knowledge into action. I will also use it as part of my thesis later in my course. I will use it as a stepping stone for my will to help children with behavioral and neural disabilities in the near future.

References

Frith, U. D., & Snowling, M. D. (1983). Reading for meaning and reading for sound in autistic and dyslexic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 97(01), 75. doi: 10.1017/S0003055403000534

Gillam, R. B. (2000). Fast ForWord: Training Childrens Brains to Learn Language? Perspectives on Neurophysiology and Neurogenic Speech and Language Disorders, 10(1), 15. doi:10.1044/nnsld10.1.15

Lim, H. A. (2010). Effect of "Developmental Speech and Language Training Through Music" on Speech Production in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Music Therapy, 47(1), 2-26. doi:10.1093/jmt/47.1.2

Kellerman, G. R., Fan, J., & Gorman, J. M. (2005). Auditory Abnormalities in Autism: Toward Functional Distinctions Among Findings. CNS Spectrums, 10(09), 748-756. doi:10.1017/s1092852900019738

Klin, A.M. (2002). Listening preferences in regard to speech in four children with developmental disabilities. Journal of Child Psychology Psychiatry; 33: 763–9

Kraus, N., & Chandrasekaran, B. (2010). Music training for the development of auditory skills. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(8), 599-605. doi:10.1038/nrn2882

Kraus, N., Slater, J., Thompson, E. C., Hornickel, J., Strait, D. L., Nicol, T., & White-Schwoch, T. (2014). Music Enrichment Programs Improve the Neural Encoding of Speech in At-Risk Children. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(36), 11913-11918. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1881-14.2014

Ohare, A. (2012). The effects of adaptive training in auditory temporal processing on specific language impairment: a randomized controlled trial of FastForWord in children. Http://isrctn.org/>. doi:10.1186/isrctn78383951

Russo, N., Skoe, E., Trommer, B., Nicol, T., Zecker, S., Bradlow, A., & Kraus, N. (2008). Deficient brainstem encoding of pitch in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Clinical Neurophysiology, 119(8), 1720-1731. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2008.01.108

Toca, S. B., & Miller, J. M. (1979, April). Adapted melodic intonation therapy: a case study of an experimental language program for an autistic child. Retrieved August 13, 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/422532