Music Therapy as a Facilitator of Conceptual Understanding in Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

A total of 18 participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are part of this study. The participants have been subdivided into two groups, as balanced as possible in terms of ASD level, age and sex, forming a control group and an experimental group. The control group received sensory information in the strict sense, based on the narration of a story, while the experimental group perceived the same sensory information, but the narration of the story was complemented by a soft background musical melody, following the parameters of the different music therapy methods, with the aim of analysing whether there are differences in the understanding of the information between the two groups: the control group and the experimental group. Data have been analyzed using non-parametric statistics, due to the small sample size, using the Kruskall- Wallis Test, the Median Test and the Jonckheere-Terpstra Test, together with the corresponding ranks. The results of the Kruskall-Wallis Test for k independent samples show significantly different scores between the two groups (sig: .00), with participants in the experimental group achieving a much greater recovery in comprehension than participants in the control group, as observed in the distribution of the analysis ranks. These data have been cross-checked and corroborated by the other complementary tests in the analysis. In conclusion, music used as a complementary method facilitates the formation of source memory, or contextual memory, related to the encoding of information. This, in turn, supports the overall neuropsychological information-processing pathway and, consequently, enhances comprehension of the information.