Jareeluk Ratanaphan* (Ph,D), Wattana Makkasman and Taweewat watthanakuljaroen
School of Educational Studies, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University,Bangpood, Pakkret, Nonthaburi 11120,Thailand
e-mail address: jareeluk@yahoo.com
Abstrsct:
The objectives of this research were to:
- Compare the attention span of autism and children with LD between before and after participate with Thai Music Therapy Activities
- Compare the communication skill of autism and children with LD between after and before participate with Thai Music Therapy Activities
- Study the relation between attention span and communication skill of autism who participate with Thai Music Therapy Activities
- Study the relation between attention span and communication skill of children with LD who join with Thai Music Therapy Activities
- Study the opinion of teachers and parents toward Thai Music Therapy Activities.
The design of the experiment was the Single Subject Design. The research sample consisted of 5 autism and 5 children with LD. The employed research instrument comprised:
- Thai Music Therapy Activities
- A behavior observation form to assess attention span and communication skill
- An interview form to assess opinions on Thai Music Therapy Activities. Sign test and content analysis were used for analyzing.
The finding were followed:
- The post-attention span of autism and LD was significantly higher than their pre-attention counterpart at the.05 level
- The post-communication skill of autism and children with LD was significantly higher than their pre-attention counterpart at the.05 level
- The relation between attention span and communication skill of autism was significantly in the same direction at the.05 level
- Study the relation between attention span and communication skill of LD was not significantly in the opposite direction
- The opinion of teacher and parent about Thai Music Therapy Activities were follows:
- Listen to a song: They are agree with listening to a song in morning, at lunch and at noon for 5-15 minutes. Everyone like Thai song, listener take a peaceful and clam down during listen to Thai song
- Play a musical instrument: it’s not difficult for children who’s autism and LD to play a musical instrument like castanets, drum, wooden rhythm clappers etc. children like it and look so happy during playing musical instrument
- Rhythmic activities: they agree with rhythmic activities. It made children still concentrate on listening and waiting for rhythmic which they must move
- Sing a song: they agree with this activities. It made children still concentrate on listening and waiting for “word” which they must sing or not sing
- Applying an activities: teacher and parent sure that they can apply this activities at classroom or at home.it’s simple to understand the activities
- Suggestion: Training teachers and parents on the beginning of academic year
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*Assistant Professor, Leader of researcher