title: Parents and Young Children with Disabilities: The Effects of a Home-Based Music Therapy Program on Parent-Child Interactions.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Responsive parenting style and synchronous parent-child interactions have a positive impact on children in terms of language, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Despite widely documented benefits of music therapy on parent-child interactions, empirical evidence for the effects of music therapy on parent-child synchrony is lacking.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To examine effects of parent-child dyads' participation in a six-week home-based music therapy program on parent response, child initiation, and parent-child synchrony, as well as parents' daily use of musical activities with their child.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-six parent-child dyads participated in this pretest-posttest within-subject single-group design study. Participating dyads included parents and their child with disabilities or developmental delays (ages 1-3 years inclusive). Parent-child dyads participated in a home-based music therapy program that included six weekly 40-minute sessions, and incorporated five responsive teaching strategies (i.e., affect, match, reciprocity, shared control, and contingency). Observational data were recorded for parent-child interactions and parent-child synchrony.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Parents' positive physical and verbal responses, as well as children's positive verbal initiations, increased significantly pre- to post-intervention; however, children's positive physical initiations did not increase significantly. Parent-child synchrony also improved significantly pre- to post-intervention.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Findings support the use of home-based music therapy programs to facilitate parent-child interactions in the areas of parental responsiveness and child-initiated communication, as well as parent-child synchrony.
authors.affiliation: Florida State University yyy7081@my.fsu.edu.
authors.forename: Yen-Hsuan
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D019988:Children with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D008297:Male; D009147:Music Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology
keywords: music therapy; musical play; parent education; parent-child interactions; parent-child synchrony