INTERSECCION CALLE C 023560467 MIRIAN TERESA LOAIZA PAEZ

The music group demonstrated greater social attention compared to the robot and academic groups (see Figures 4-3A-C and Table 4-3). Children directed maximum attention towards their social partners compared to all other attentional targets during all conditions except music-making (see Figure 4-4A). We think that the very nature of the context afforded sustained social monitoring. Children were encouraged to practice novel dual and multilimb rhythmic synchrony- and imitation-based games with their social partners during the training sessions. When typically developing children learn complex motor skills, they do so by observing the demonstrations of a skilled model (Ferrari, 1996; Weeks & Anderson, 2000). We encouraged children to learn novel motor sequences to the beat of music and further asked them to synchronize their movements with their social partners. In order to accurately synchronize their

movements spatially and temporally with their social partners, children had to continuously monitor their social partners to detect changes in their movement patterns and adapt their own movements to those of their adult partners. Hence, children might have engaged in greater social monitoring given the task

demands of the context. Previous research also suggests that engagement in imitation and synchrony- based activities within dyadic and triadic contexts promotes sustained social attention in children with ASDs (Escalona, Field, Nadel, & Lundy, 2002; Landa et al., 2011). Further, our findings also fit with the existing literature on the positive effects of music on social engagement of children with ASDs (Finnigan & Starr, 2010; Kim et al., 2008; Wimpory & Others, 1995). For example, 7 months of musical interaction therapy, which involved interactive play to the beat of music within dyadic exchanges between a 3.5 year old girl with autism and her mother led to an increase in eye contact and interactive involvement of the child with her mother. Moreover, these improvements were sustained over a 20 month follow-up period (Wimpory et al., 1995). Similarly, in another case study, 12 sessions of music therapy led to greater improvements in eye contact, imitation, and turn taking skills in a pre-school child with autism compared to a non-musical play-based intervention (Finnigan & Starr, 2010). Our results can be explained by findings from music education research on typically developing individuals, which suggest that music is in fact a kind of social glue that improves cooperation and social bonding between people (Overy & Molnar-Szakacs, 2009). It has been proposed that joint actions involving music-making, singing, and dancing lead to a shared affective experience, which in turn evokes prosocial behaviors and a sense of affiliation in the group (Kirschner & Tomasello, 2010; Overy & Molnar-Szakacs, 2009; Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). For example, following engagement in a joint music-making activity (versus a story-telling game), 4-year old children spontaneously showed cooperative and empathetic behavior towards their peer (Kirschner & Tomasello, 2010). Overall, as children in the music group engaged in enjoyable, socially synchronous activities with their social partners, the task demands and the nature of the context might have promoted shared engagement between children and their interaction partners, and children might have shared their attentional states and interests with their adult partners.

As discussed above, children spent maximum time engaged in social attention episodes during all conditions, except music-making, during which children directed maximum attention towards non-social objects (see Figure 4-4C). The music-making condition involved children engaging in different musical

instruments such as drums and xylophones. We think that given the easy access to objects, children engaged in greater non-social fixation on objects in this condition. Moreover, our activities required them to practice simple and complex drum and xylophone patterns which needed them to attend to the musical instruments. These findings validate the results obtained in the academic group, which suggest that engaging in predominantly object-based activities led to preferential attention to objects (see Figure 4- 3C). Further, this fits with existing literature which suggests that in the presence of competing social and non-social stimuli, children with autism prioritize non-social stimuli at the cost of attending to social stimuli (Ben-Sasson et al., 2007; Klin et al., 2002). This could be attributed to their social orienting deficits (Dawson et al., 2004) as well as their impairments in attention disengagement (Courchesne et al., 1994; Courchesne et al., 1994; Landry & Bryson, 2004) which are discussed in greater detail in the following sections.

Lastly, in terms of social attention type, children engaged in greater duration of spontaneous compared to responsive social attention episodes in a majority of conditions (see Figure 4-5 and Table 4-5). Also, consistent with the nature and setup of our training context, children directed greater attention to the trainer compared to the model during all conditions (see Figure 4-5 and Table 4-4). Considering the documented evidence on the persistent nature of impairments in spontaneous initiations in ASDs (Mundy, Card, & Fox, 2000), it was very encouraging to see that the music-based context afforded greater

spontaneous compared to responsive engagement in children. Although children with ASDs demonstrate impairments in both RJA and IJA, difficulties in responding to attentional bids initiated by others remit to a great extent over development (Leekam et al., 2000; Mundy & Hogan, 1994; Mundy, 2003). However, impairments in IJA are more severe and persist even in older children with ASDs (Mundy & Hogan, 1994; Mundy, 2000; Sigman & Ruskin, 1999). Moreover, future outcomes such as the ability to establish peer relationships in adolescence are related to IJA and not RJA abilities (Mundy, 2000). Results from behavioral intervention studies targeting attention skills suggest that children demonstrate greater improvements in their ability to respond to bids of others compared to their spontaneous initiation skills,

possibly since IJA is difficult to promote in children with ASDs (Kasari, 2002; Whalen & Schreibman, 2003). Our study suggests that socially-embedded, music-based whole body activities have great potential in promoting spontaneous attention and engagement between children and their social partners. Other studies have also reported improvements in child-initiated social engagement following music-based therapies (Bunt & Stige, 1994; Kim et al., 2008; Kim et al., 2009; Stephens, 2008; Wigram, 2002; Wimpory et al., 1995). For example, 12-weeks of improvisational music therapy sessions led to greater improvements in the spontaneous initiation of joint attention in 10 children with ASDs compared to toy play sessions (Kim et al., 2008). Along the same lines, we think that the predictable, non-intimidating yet enjoyable nature of the activities in the music group might have elicited spontaneous initiation of social engagement in the current study.