Music Therapy for Speech and Prosody in Autistic Children (MTSPAC)

National Taiwan University

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Speech Disorders in Children; Autism; Language Delay

Treatments: Behavioral: music therapy, speech therapy; Behavioral: speech therapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06110884

202307099RIND

Details and patient eligibility

About

This research is a single-blind randomized controlled trial, where the investigators plan to recruit 40 children with autism, randomly divided into two groups. The music therapy intervention group will receive an hour of group music therapy in addition to traditional language therapy. The control group will receive only traditional language therapy. The trial will last for 8 weeks, and participants in both groups will be assessed before and after the trial.

During the study, the investigators will use professional recording equipment to record their speech and use the speech analysis software to objectively compare whether there are significant differences in prosody between the two groups of children with autism before and after the intervention. Besides the acoustic measurement the investigators also assess the language abilities autism trait performance, adaptive function, emotional behavior, and parent-child stress levels.

Full description

This research is a single-blind randomized controlled trial, where the investigators plan to recruit 40 children with autism, randomly divided into two groups. The music therapy intervention group will receive an hour of group music therapy in addition to traditional language therapy. The control group will receive only traditional language therapy. The trial will last for 8 weeks, and participants in both groups will be assessed before and after the trial.

During the study, the investigators will use professional recording equipment to record their speech and use the speech analysis software to objectively compare whether there are significant differences in prosody between the two groups of children with autism before and after the intervention. Besides the acoustic measurement the investigators also assess the language abilities autism trait performance, adaptive function, emotional behavior, and parent-child stress levels.

The study hypothesizes that music therapy can contribute to improving language development delays in children with autism and may enhance their language development further by ameliorating prosody abnormalities. The investigators hope that this research can propose more diversified therapeutic methods for language development in children with autism.

Enrollment: 40 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 3 to 5 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• children with autism
• aged 3-5 y/o
• children with speech delay (T-score of Preschool Language Scale < 40)
• Mandarin as first language

Exclusion criteria

• children with other neurological diseases
• children without verbal output
• children with articulation or voice disorder

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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40 participants in 2 patient groups

Music therapy group

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: music therapy, speech therapy

Control group

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Behavioral: speech therapy