Music as a Motivator for Communication for Students with Deafblindness Friday, August 1, 2014 AER Conference – San Antonio, Texas Presented by Shannon Darst, Ph.D, CTVI, Certified Music Teacher

Overview of the Presentation Explanation of the study entitled “Music as a Motivator for Communication for Students with Deafblindness” Brief description of the topic of the study Statement of the problem Purpose of the study Research questions Brief description of study methodology Results and discussion of the study Significance of the study Implication for future research Examples of ways to incorporate results into daily educational programming

The Topic of the Study Communication for students with deafblindness Motivating communication Use of music and music therapy techniques for motivating communication

Statement of the Problem Motivators for expressive communication for students with deafblindness Music and music therapy techniques in practice Lack of formal research on this topic

Purpose of the Study To investigate the use of music as a motivator for expressive communication for students with deafblindness Use of naturalistic observation Measurement of types of expressive communication Identification of types of music or musical activity that elicit expressive communication

Research Questions What are the student’s receptive and expressive communication levels? How are the student’s receptive and expressive communication levels reflected during the music activities? How is music a motivator for a student to communicate expressively? In what ways does the student’s deafblindness affect the student’s communication skills during the music activities?

Methodology Qualitative design Data collection Data analysis

Results and Discussion – Research Question 1 What are the student’s receptive and expressive communication levels? STAGE of COMMUNICATION  Student 1 and Student 2 began and ended the study in the illocutionary stage.  Student 3 began and ended the study in the locutionary study, with most of his expressive communication being in the illocutionary stage. COMMUNICATION MATRIX RESULTS Student 1 made progress across all four domains and in all levels of communication based on Communication Matrix results Student 2 made progress in one domain and in two levels of communication within that domain. Student 3 made progress across three domains and in one level of one of those domains. OVERALL All three participants gained noticeable communication skills over the course of the study.

Results and Discussion – Research Question 2 Student 1 How are the student’s receptive and expressive communication levels reflected during the music activities?

Results and Discussion – Research Question 2 Student 1

Results and Discussion – Research Question 2 Student 2 How are the student’s receptive and expressive communication levels reflected during the music activities?

Results and Discussion – Research Question 2 Student 2

Results and Discussion – Research Question 2 Student 3 How are the student’s receptive and expressive communication levels reflected during the music activities?

Results and Discussion – Research Question 3 How is music a motivator for a student to communicate expressively? All participants communicated during music activities by demonstrating: personal desires and preferences refusal attention to an object and/or another person turn-taking an understanding of cause-and-effect an understanding the actions of others anticipation of the next activity Certain activities motivated all participants Playing keyboard Hearing a specific song Playing drums Reading calendar

Results and Discussion – Research Question 4 In what ways does the student’s deafblindness affect the student’s communication skills during the music activities? Lack of any visual input Primary sense used was tactile, with the auditory sense used in conjunction with the tactile sense. Reading calendar was the only purely tactile activity during this study Hearing a voice was the least motivating to participants

Significance of the Study Music can be used as a motivator for communication for students with deafblindness Students with deafblindness may benefit from music and music activities in their educational programming

Implications for Future Research Research to support future studies Future study topics

Music for Communication in Daily Educational Programming For all settings Use of rhythm, vibration, and tactile stimuli to convey concepts For music class Active learning Cooperative play Group/team activities

Questions or Comments THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! BE DARING! If at first you don’t succeed, try it again and again!

References Rowland, C. (1996). Communication Matrix. Portland: Child Development and Rehabilitation Center, Oregon Health Sciences University. Retrieved from