Effectiveness of Music Therapy on Social Skill Growth in Educable Intellectual Disability Boys

Social skills include the ability to establish interpersonal relationships with others in a way that is acceptable in terms of norms of society and it should be beneficial to society and have mutual interest. Method: Sample was taken from especial elementary school for educable intellectual disability children in Mashhad, Iran. The sample was boys between 9 - 11 years. After the initial selection of students, they were randomly assigned to two groups of twenty (experimental and control groups). 7 sessions of music therapy were performed for each one in the experimental group whereas no sessions were applied for anyone in the control group. Winelend Social Growth Scale was used to measure their social skill before and after intervention. Result: The mean difference in social skill between the two groups were statistically less than the 0.01 which is highly significant (P-value = 0.0005). This shows that art and music therapy are effective on the growth of social skills in educable intellectual disability children. Conclusion: This research shows that music therapy is effective for improvement of social skills in educable intellectual disability children.