The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of improvisational music therapy, based on Nordoff and Robbins' (1977) Creative Music Therapy approach, on autistic children's communicative behaviors. Eleven autistic children, ranging in age from 6 to 9 years, participated in individual improvisational music therapy sessions for a period of 10 weeks. A reversal design was applied. The Checklist of Communicative Responses/Acts Score Sheet (CRASS), designed specifically for this study, was used to measure the subjects' musical and nonmusical communicative behaviors. Results strongly suggest the efficacy of improvisational music therapy in increasing autistic children's communicative behaviors. Significant differences were found between the subjects' first session CRASS scores and those of their last sessions (p < .01). Also, abrupt and substantial decreases in scores were noted for all 11 subjects when reversal was applied.
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Carlo Edgerton (1994) studied this question.