AMTA Graduate Student Research Award

Abstract

Background: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) frequently have difficulty managing sustained and selective attention ( Burack, 1994 ; Chien et al., 2014 ). Since attention is a prerequisite to the development of higher cognitive functions such as learning and social skills, children with ASD need to address these deficits in order to obtain optimal benefits from therapeutic or educational interventions. Related Literature: Despite their attention problems, children with ASD demonstrate musical sensitivity and a perceptual preference for music, which may facilitate attention to music stimuli ( Blackstock, 1978 ; Thaut, 1987 ). In addition, high-functioning children with ASD have adequate or superior pitch perception compared to typically developing children ( Heaton, 2005 ). However, no published study has yet explored the relationship between specific musical elements, such as pitch range, and attention in children with ASD. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of pitch range on sustained and selective attention in children with ASD. Methods: Twenty high-functioning children with ASD aged 7 to 14 years, including 17 males and 3 females, took part in this study. Each child individually completed the Music-Based Attention Assessment-Revised for Children (MAA-RC) (based on the MAA as designed by Jeong, 2011 ). The MAA-RC is a 36-item melodic contour identification test, including sustained and selective attention subtests. For each subtest, 18 melodic contours consisting of 3 notes each are heard in ascending, descending, and stationary directions. Half of the items are presented at a low pitch range (i.e., 220Hz to 523.55Hz), and the other half of the items are presented at a high pitch range (i.e., 1046.5Hz to 2637Hz) in a keyboard timbre via a laptop computer with speakers at a 65 dB level. During the selective attention subtest, the researcher presented a recorded continuous sound (i.e., water flowing) against each target melodic contour as an auditory distraction. In both attention subtests, participants listened to each melodic contour and identified the direction of the melody. After a demonstration and practice trials, participants first completed the sustained attention subtest, followed by the selective attention subtest. The task lasted approximately 30 minutes for each participant. Results: The descriptive results showed that participants in the sustained attention subtest achieved higher scores with a low pitch range (M = 8, SD = 0.97) than with a high pitch range (M = 6.8, SD = 1.91). In the selective attention subtest, participants also achieved higher scores with a low pitch range (M = 7.7, SD = 1.72) than with a high pitch range (M = 7.25, SD = 1.94). A series of paired samples t -tests demonstrated that children with ASD achieved significantly higher scores on the sustained attention subtest when listening to melodic contours at a low pitch range compared to melodic contours at a high pitch range ( t(19 ) = 3.479, p = .003). However, results showed no statistically significant difference between a low pitch range and a high pitch range ( t(19 ) = 1.041, p = .311) in the selective attention subtest. Conclusions: Statistically significant differences were found between high and low pitch ranges in the sustained attention subtest. The results from the present study demonstrated that high-functioning children with ASD were more attentive to low-pitched sounds rather than high-pitched sounds. Additionally, participants completed the MAA-RC with a high degree of accuracy. Implications for Clinical Practice: The fact that all participants successfully completed the MAA-RC indicates that high-functioning children with ASD can understand and complete a simple melodic contour identification task. Furthermore, Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency of the MAA-RC was .86, indicating that simple music stimuli can be reliably used to assess attention in children with ASD. Additionally, results may provide basic evidence necessary for the development of music-based intervention using pitch range to promote sustained attention in children with ASD. Implications for Future Research: Future research should continue to explore the relationship between pitch range and attention in children with ASD using a larger sample size to increase test reliability and generalizability of results. Further studies could also compare the effect of pitch range on attention in children with ASD to typically developing children. In addition, increasing the number of items in both the sustained and selective attention subtests will further enhance test reliability and increase test item difficulty. For convergent validity, the MAA-RC should be compared to other non-music-based auditory attention assessments, such as the Auditory Continuous Performance Test (ACPT), which is designed to assess attention in children ( Keith, 1994 ).