The lack of social interest is one of the core features of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Individuals with ASD suffer direct and indirect consequences related to their social interaction deficits. The effect of these deficits often increases during adolescence. In this period, adolescents with ASD start to report their desire for peer social interaction, and may also experience more loneliness than their typically developing peers. It is especially vital for adolescents with ASD to have emotionally non-threatening social experiences. The non-threatening and acquiescent nature of music helps to decrease the anxiety experienced during direct interaction with others and improve the social skills of adolescents with ASD. In this study,video recordings of music therapy activities carried out with a group of adolescents with ASD are analyzed, and the outcomes are presented. While activities such as singing, rhythmic games, creative movement and dance were performed; adolescents were asked to work in dyads, in small groups and in a large group. Adolescents initiated and sustained social interactions during music sessions and less resistance was observed while interacting with their peers.
Many reasons such as social exclusion, economic insufficiency, and prejudice make it difficult for Gypsy children to reach qualified education and cause their expectations for the future to be minimized. Yet, it is considered that the property of “inclination to music”, linked especially with Gypsies, will positively affect the motivations of Gypsy children for the school and their academic achievement and thus music education and chorus education performed in this context will make considerable contributions to the education process of the children.In this context, with a pilot classroom selected from the 4th grades in a primary school all of whose students consist of Gypsy children, chorus education studies have been carried out for an academic year. In accordance with the results obtained from the research, it has been reached the end of the fact that chorus education studies have made positive contributions to the general education, cultural awareness and socialization process of Gypsy children included in the disadvantageous groups and presenting Gypsy children with the opportunities that they can turn the music permanently present in their daily lives into an advantage in educational terms is quite important.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.