The Efficiency of Instrumental and Movement Activities in Developing Mentally Retarded Adolescents' Ability to Follow Directions

Abstract

This study was conducted: (a) to determine whether instrumental or movement activities are more effective for developing trainable mentally retarded adolescents' ability to follow directions, and (b) to determine the approximate number of treatment sessions necessary to influence significantly subjects' ability to follow directions. An author-constructed pretest was administered to subjects (N = 27) to determine their ability to follow directions. Interobserver reliability between an independent data collector and the experimenter was 97%. Subjects were matched according to their pretest scores and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. Music activities used with the instrumental activities and movement activities groups were the type of activities music therapists use most often to assess the ability to follow directions (Cassity, 1985); control group activities consisted of music listening. Sessions met twice a week for 10 weeks, with results indicating that movement activities were more effective than instrumental activities for developing direction-following ability. Significant differences between the movement and control groups occurred after approximately 20 sessions; however, no signnificant differences were found between the posttest scores of instrumental and control subjects.