Observing processes reflected in and through music: A coding
scheme to monitor music therapy
A. Raglio1, D. Traficante2,3 and O. Oasi2
1Music Therapy School “Glass Harmonica”, Anni
Verdi Association, Rome, Italy
2Department of Psychology, Catholic University, Milan, Italy
3Education Technologies Research Center, Catholic University, Milan, Italy
This work is the first step of a research project carried out to show
how the musical language can permit or strengthen the relationship between
music therapist and patient. In this stage, we developed and validated
a coding scheme to observe the interactions music therapist/patient during
a music therapy session. The psychodynamic approach inspired our work:
for the psychological analysis, we referred to Stern’s theory about
interactions between infant/child and mother; for the musical analysis,
Benenzon’s theory about the musical object which works as a bridge
between music therapist and patient was taken into consideration. Our
purposes were, in particular, to study the music therapeutic process and
to give indicators for a specific assessment of the patient. To reach
these aims, we collected approximately twenty-one hours of video tape
concerning active music therapy sessions, based on the sound music improvisation.
Subjects were seven children (3 males; 4 females) aged 3-10 years (mean
age = 5.14), diagnosed with autism disorders, and seven therapists. Our
coding scheme consisted of forty-four behavioral elements, clustered in
four different classes: Verbal communication, Non-verbal communication,
Countenance, Musical communication. The data collection method adopted
was continuous recording, applied through The
Observer® Video-Pro (Noldus Information Technology bv, The Netherlands).
Reliability and concurrent validity indexes were computed.
Paper presented
at Measuring Behavior 2005
, 5th International Conference on Methods and Techniques
in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The
Netherlands.
© 2005 Noldus
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