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Improving Social Skills Through Song

Ryan Dillon, Teri K. Holmberg, MT-BC


Department of Music, Theater, and Dance
College of Arts & Sciences

Introduction Methods and Procedures Focus is the Key!


Social stories are short narratives
used to teach appropriate social Sung to the tune of the Beverly
First, we wrote lyrics for a social story song, set to the theme of The
behaviors to people with various Hillbillies:
Beverly Hillbillies, to capture the skill that we wanted participants to
forms of intellectual disability. develop: focusing their attention on the leader or the task at hand.
Research has shown them to be of At Barrier-Free,
benefit when arranged into songs for Next, we presented the song to the participants by first breaking Focus is the key.
school-aged children, so it appeared down the narrative for context and then singing through the song
to be beneficial to explore the with accompaniment. My eyes are on the speaker
effectiveness of a social story song for
and I'm listening carefully.
adults as well. Once participants learned the song, we broke it down into a one-line
call and response which would be used as a cue to focus attention I'll know just what to do
Significance should we ever get off task: At Barrier-Free Focus is the Key! and my friends will too,
A positive result to this study may
provide evidence for the effectiveness To track the cues effectiveness, we surveyed staff members when I remember to focus
of this tool when used in a variety of regarding its usage and group response following each rehearsal for a at Barrier-Free!
group social situations beyond the total of seven weeks.
drama therapy environment.
Results
Acknowledgments
Through analysis of the responses, we found that staff participants of this study
Thank you to Sally Bailey for allowing found the song beneficial in support of redirecting attention. When asked to rate
us the space within the Barrier-Free the effectiveness of the cue in rehearsal on a daily basis, their responses averaged
drama program as well as to the staff 4.54 out of 5 over the course of the seven weeks of study. When staff were asked
and participants of the program for how often they observed the cue in use, the response averaged around 3 times per
their willingness to lend their input to rehearsal. But when asked how many times they personally used it, the average
this study. In addition, thank you to was less than once each rehearsal. As Barrier-Free staff have roles similar to peer-
Anita Cortez and the Developing leaders, it is likely that the cue was initiated by the main leader as the most
Scholars Program for providing the effective strategy in a rehearsal setting. A useful area of further study would be to
means for this study to occur. evaluate the benefit of cue usage between peers or from peer-leaders.

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