A Meta Analysis On The Effects Of Music Therapy For Autistic Spectrum Disorder At Home And Abroad

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined as the core disorder of the pervasive developmental disorders, with which people have difficulties with behavior, social interaction, communication and language, and so on. The onset of Autistic spectrum disorder is prior to age 3 years, prevalence estimates for autistic spectrum disorder range from 5 to 63 per 10,000, with more recent estimates showing much higher prevalence rates than those from older studies. What's the worse, there is non-specific factors causing the ASD, so it is necessary to explore the effects of different types of intervention. Music therapy uses music and its elements to directed treatment, there are many researches set out to assess the effectiveness of music therapy for individuals with ASD theoretically and clinically at home and abroad, however the methods and standards are not the same, neither the parameters which show the results. In order to know the state of the field well, this study use meta-analysis assess the literatures abroad from 2004 to 2010 and all the literatures at home in this field, select 13 literatures abroad and 7 literatures at home which match the criteria of meta-analysis. This paper encodes basic feature and design feature of all the literatures in descriptive way, and calculate the effect size. An overall effect sizes of d=0.795 among 16 dependent variables from 13quantitative studies abroad, and an overall effect sizes of d=0.918 among 15 variables at home.There is further analysis the effects of different symptoms that music therapy treat, from the aspect of the study abroad, the least effect (d=0.218) is the treatment about self care, however the largest effect (d=2.256) is the change of score of the scale used to assess all the symptoms of individual with ASD, the effect about the other symptoms is more than moderate. From the aspect of the internal study, the best effect (d=1.037) is the treatment about disability in intelligence, the effect about the other symptoms is more than moderate. Comparing the effects of the different musical interventions, we find that music therapy in a creative way (d=0.954) is the best in external literatures, the effect about the other therapy ways is more than moderate, music therapy in a adjustive way (d=1.083) is the best in internal literatures, but the ways in internal studies don't include the integrate way entirely. Comparing the effects of the different designs, we find that music therapy is more useful for autism than non-autism, and the effect size of the discrepancy is 1.160. Comparing the music to no music, we find that music is more effective than play therapy or language therapy. In the internal studies, acupuncture combine music therapy (d=0.680) is more effective than acupuncture simply. This paper first use meta-analysis to compare the internal studies to external, we can conclude the following results: the external studies set out several years earlier than the studies at home; the internal studies have more participants than the studies abroad, but the observation variables used for measure of the internal studies are too simple to practical; the intervention used in the internal studies is more simple than the studies abroad; the range of effect sizes of internal studies is much better.Finally, we will forecast the tendency of the future studies and provide some new thought for clinical researches. We believe more and more studies in this field will be launched; music intervention toward autism will be growing diversification; the studies tend to practicability; music therapy will be more useful for all the age group of individual with ASD.