A reader turned me onto a blog by J. Henrique Alves in Perth. I found some fantastic writings on Henrique’s experiences with music sparking a connection with his autistic son. It is as I’ve said in the past, there is something quite powerful inherent in music. The perfect note, the right tune, the proper tempo have a way of connecting people in a deep and meaningful way, even those of us who typically are unable to connect.

Here is an excerpt:

‘In the last few years, I’ve discovered still another magical side of music, through the relationship with my 8-year old autistic son. While practicing the bass, I could notice how his attention would shift from whatever he would be doing, drawn by my plucking of the strings, and the simultaneous sound this would produce through the speakers of my little practice amplifier. I’d then lay the bass on the bed, so that he could explore the sounds, plucking gently the strings, showing some surprise with the connection between his touching the strings, and a matching sound being produced. Throughout the years, he has consistently shown a higher level of interest in our musical exploration sessions than he would typically demonstrate in other activities.

[snip]

Based on our experience, it was not surprising to find out that results [1] published this year from a recent study conducted by Dr. Ami Klin, of the Yale Child Study Center, have confirmed that the synchronous nature of sound and movement captures consistently the attention of autistic children, more than any other form of interaction with objects or people (such as eye contact, touch, or movement and sounds in isolation). In a [2] recent interview, Klin said:

“I and colleagues looked at a way […] 2-year-olds with autism would look at adult care givers, […] and those children spend less time looking at people’s eyes and more time looking at people’s mouth […] And that was puzzling because the eyes are really the window for the soul, they are the way that we experience people, their emotions and their intentions. And so we are puzzled by the fact that they showed increased attention to the mouth. With […] the new insights, we raised the hypothesis that the reason why they were looking at mouth is because the mouth is the part of the face that contains the greatest audio-visual synchrony, lip movements and speech sounds co-occurring.”

Our experience with music, which is a generalization of this synchronicity between movement and sound, provides, in our minds, a further confirmation of the results published by Dr. Ami Klin and his colleagues at Yale. His new insights provide further, scientific proof, to why [3] music therapy programs, such as the few we have contacted here in Australia to strengthen the basis of our daily interactions with our son, are so successful, providing not eyes, but music as a window to the souls of autistic children. ‘

The full post is here…

[4] http://beachesfromafar.blogspot.com/2009/05/music-is-magic-for-autistic-children.html

Henrique has other tremendous posts as well about music, autism, science and more. Thanks for sharing, Henrique!

All the best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive Psychology Coach