Improvisational Music Therapy

Music therapy with children with ASD often adopts relationship-based approaches, and therapists often create opportunities for reciprocal interactions, affect sharing, turn taking and joint attention with the underlying aim to foster the child's motivation to interact and relate to others (Thompson, McFerran, & Gold, 2014). Thus music therapy has the potential and creates an opportunity to improve children's social skills, even with non-verbal children with ASD. A number of studies evaluated music therapy as an intervention to improve social skills in children with ASD. Kim, Wigram, and Gold (2008) used improvisational music therapy to assess the effect of music therapy on developing joint attention and positive emotional communication during