The Sounds Of Learning: Studying The Impact Of Music On Children With Autism

ScienceDaily (July 21, 2009) — In June 2009, researchers reported that archaeologists in Germany had discovered a 35,000-year-old flute made of bird bone. It represented, one newspaper said, "the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture." And we have been tapping our toes, humming along, singing and dancing ever since.

The power of music affects all of us and has long appealed to our emotions. It is for this reason that UCLA researchers are using music to help children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), for whom understanding emotions is a very difficult task. This inability robs them of the chance to communicate effectively and make friends and can often lead to social isolation and loneliness.

Thanks to a grant from the NAMM Foundation, the trade association of the international music products association, Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, a researcher at the UCLA Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity and member of the of the Help Group–UCLA Autism Research Alliance, and colleagues have developed a music education program designed to help children with ASD better understand emotions and learn to recognize emotions in others.

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