An innovative training study on music therapy teaching methods for autism disorder (ASD)

Practice has found that music and therapeutics have become more and more closely related in recent years. Music can assist in the treatment of certain diseases and relieve stress. For example, people with autism have common symptoms such as social communication disorders, communication disorders, and interest disorders. Although patients live in their own worlds, they also have common ground where they like music is interested in music, and have a strong talent for music. Through innovative training through music therapy, they use Orff's teaching and Kodaly. The expression of music language in teaching method, combining music with treatment, can effectively improve symptoms, relieve mood, relax mood, and slowly return to healthy social life. Under the influence of the novel coronavirus epidemic, music therapy is more suitable for home treatment, establishing a social communication relationship between autism patients and families. Through consulting literature, practical activities, visits, surveys and other practical modes, this paper innovates and trains and studies the benefits of music therapy for people with autism, and puts forward reference suggestions for music therapy.

A Survey of Speech-Language Pathologists' Approaches to Assessing Social Communication Disorders in Children

Purpose The purpose of this article is to explore and describe the approaches and specific assessment tools that speech-language pathologists are currently using to assess social communication disorders (SCDs) in children, in relation to current best practices. Method Ninety-four speech-language pathologists completed an online survey asking them to identify which of the following approaches they use to assess children with SCD: parent/teacher report, naturalistic observation, formal assessment, language sample analysis, interviews, semistructured tasks, and peer/self-report. Participants were also asked to identify specific assessment tools they use within each approach. Results Participants most commonly assess SCDs by combining interviews, naturalistic observation, language sampling, parent/teacher report, and formal assessment. Semistructured tasks and peer/self-report tools were less frequently utilized. Several established parent/teacher report and formal assessment tools were commonly identified for assessing SCDs. Most participants use an informal approach for interviews, language sampling, and naturalistic observations in their SCD assessment process. Conclusions Generally, participants follow best practices for assessing SCDs by combining several different approaches. Some considerations for future assessment are identified, including the use of established protocols in the place of informal approaches in order to make the assessment of SCDs more systematic. Future directions for research are discussed.

Communication Disorders: Neurodevelopmental Considerations

Communication disorders are a common neurodevelopmental disorder. Difficulties are evident with structural language, phonology, and pragmatics. Each area is differentiated within current diagnostic approaches. However, difficulties within the language system often co-occur. The assessment of communication difficulties requires professionals to profile linguistic skills rather than rely on single diagnostic measures. Social communication disorders raise particular challenges in their assessment and their differentiation with other neurodevelopmental disorders. Communication disorders also co-occur, with problems in literacy and behavior highlighting the importance of multiprofessional approaches to assessment and intervention. There is an increasing evidence base for effective interventions that professionals can access to support children’s communication difficulties.

Assessing empathy and managing emotions through interactions with an affective avatar

Assistive technologies can improve the quality of life of people diagnosed with different forms of social communication disorders. We report on the design and evaluation of an affective avatar aimed at engaging the user in a social interaction with the purpose of assisting in communication therapies. A human–avatar taxonomy is proposed to assist the design of affective avatars aimed at addressing social communication disorder. The avatar was evaluated with 30 subjects to assess how effectively it conveys the desired emotion and elicits empathy from the user. Results provide evidence that users become used to the avatar after a number of interactions, and they perceive the defined behavior as being logical. The users’ interactions with the avatar entail affective reactions, including the mimic emotions that users felt, and establish a preliminary ground truth about prototypic empathic interactions with avatars that is being used to train learning algorithms to support social communication disorder evaluation.

Assessing Social Communication Abilities of School-Aged Children

This article explains the importance of assessing social communication abilities of school-age children. It summarizes the effect of social communication on academic abilities, reviews terminology and definitions relevant to social communication disorders, lists areas of the brain involved in social communication, provides examples of social communication skill development, offers relevant pre-assessment considerations, as well as describes standardized instruments and informal procedures used to determine the presence of social communication deficits in school-age children.

Discourse and Social Cognition Disorders Affecting Communication Abilities

This chapter offers an overview of the pragmatic and social communication disorders that can occur after an alteration of the brain, as best exemplified by individuals with right hemisphere damage. It also discusses the theoretical approaches developed to explain indirect speech act comprehension and inference impairments affecting conversational and narrative comprehension. Similar deficits have been described in other brain-damaged populations such as individuals with traumatic brain injuries, early dementia, and some forms of aphasia. Taken together, deficits of discourse and social aspects of communication abilities show they depend upon the integrity of brain networks that are widely distributed over the brain. These deficits need to be better recognized and described with reference to the underlying cognitive processes involved in order to move toward a more efficient way of helping these individuals participate in society again.