Approaches to Communication through Music

Margaret Corke

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781136613258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

One of the ways forward when working with those who have little or no speech, or limited comprehension of language, is to use music. In this book tried and tested approaches and activities devised to promote the development of communication and social interaction at a fundamental level are clearly set out. The ethos behind this manual is a person-centered approach, within a structured framework and allowing for differentiation and improvisation according to the learner's individual needs and developmental levels.

This is a practical guide that contains lots of ideas and original activities for the specialist and non-specialist alike. It provides original songs and music scores, activities and games, and suggestions for group work for learners at a variety of levels.

This book will be helpful to teachers, carers, therapists and parents who work or live with people with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties. Music teachers and coordinators working in mainstream early years and primary education will also find the songs and activities useful.

1
The Approach

When working with those who have little or no speech, or limited comprehension of language, one of the ways forward is to use music. Engaging people both physically and emotionally, music impacts on mind, body and spirit. Within the Interactive Music process other components, namely fun, and visual, tactile and essentially person-centred approaches, combine with music to form the basis of a therapeutic approach devised to teach fundamental communication and social interaction.

Developement Research over the past few decades has provided an impressive body of information, particularly in relation to language and communication, and it is this that enables us to consider learning at its earliest. Throughout this manual I have drawn parallels between early infant development and the development of learners with profound or severe learning difficulties. While there are differences, much can be learned.

This chapter aims both to explain the nature of Interactive Music and to provide a gentle theoretical framework to underpin the approach.

Aims

The need to establish foundational skills before insisting on other attainments is paramount. In human terms, learning about social interaction must come first, but cognitive skills can be fostered during the communication learning process also. Skills, when learned, will need to be reinforced and consolidated for some time before other, more complex strategies can be acquired. This book will help guide readers through some of the pitfalls of teaching and suggest tried and tested developmental teaching strategies.

Any education process/programme should ensure that people who are unable to acquire even the most basic rudiments of spoken language are given an equal opportunity to develop alternative means of communication. This surely is a basic human right. Learners with profound, severe or complex and multiple learning difficulties will most definitely benefit from a curriculum where the emphasis is placed on using interactive approaches (Nind 1999).

Teaching must go at a pace learners can cope with and essentially educators must learn to recognise and adapt to learners’ developmental level. In order to teach the rudiments of social interaction and communication we must start from basics and ensure that learners are ready and able to move on to the next stage. Only when firm foundations are laid can progress ensue. This makes perfect sense to me, but I continue to see practitioners striving to teach the seemingly unattainable. Let me try to get my point across by using a hypothetical case study:

Rory is a ten-year-old boy, functioning within Piaget’s (1952) ‘sensory motor’ stage of development. He has complex and multiple learning difficulties compounded by a severe neurological condition. Rory has difficulty understanding and using facial expression and gestures. He has no apparent means of asking for what he wants, and more often than not is helped with everything he does. His behaviour is considered to be pre-intentional.

Rory presents multiple challenges to educators who must provide him with a ‘needs relevant’ curriculum but ‘within the letter of collective policy demands’ (Clough 1998). This, as Clough explains, causes tension both pedagogically and in terms of teacher role. As an example he notes tension between ‘the needs of the student’ and the demands of the law. The notion of ‘curriculum for all’ was thrust upon special schools in the Education Reform Act (1988). Whether or not it included any consideration of the cognitive and social ability of ‘special’ students is debatable.

In general, then, it seems to me that teachers in this field are left to manage key curriculum areas such as English and mathematics, with little or no knowledge of developmental research or any idea of the wealth of information it could provide to inform their work. Instead, I have observed that many continue to adopt skill acquisition exercises beyond the cognitive level of students. For example, imagine trying to ‘help’ Rory (hand over hand) to hold a pencil in order to write his name, or physically hold on to his thumb during the ‘Hello’ song as if it were his greeting. This is nonsensical. Why? Well, put yourself in Rory’s shoes; what is he learning from these experiences? Perhaps, sadly, only how uncomfortable it feels to have a hand grasped by a stronger person. Cognitively he has not yet reached a stage where he even understands object concept (what an object is), let alone the value of the written word or what a pencil can do. Rory needs to go back to the beginning, back to basics. He has a right to an education that meets his needs and improves his quality of life. Were I to be in his position, perhaps I might develop behaviours (say biting my hand or spitting) in order to avoid doing the task. Need I say more?

The aims listed below are fundamental to all learning. Key learning areas are identified and this provides a foundational framework for social and cognitive learning at a basic level. Each aim, when achieved, will help to provide a cornerstone for subsequent learning.

• To have fun and to develop an inner satisfaction at communicating effectively.
• To tolerate the closeness of another person.
• To enjoy being with another person.
• To initiate and maintain social interaction.
• To develop and understand early communication, such as meaningful eye contact, body language, facial expression, anticipation and turn-taking exchanges.
• To develop sound production and vocal imitation skills.
• To explore and understand the given physical environment, including instruments and sound-making items.
• To develop an understanding of cause and effect, both socially (how their behaviour affects others) and physically (how their behaviour affects their environment). To develop physical imitation skills.
• To develop extended ‘conversation’, using a combination of the above skills, together with any language the student may possess, meaningful or otherwise.
• To develop self-esteem from knowing that the person interacting with them is also enjoying the interaction, i.e. they want to be there.
• To express and develop a sense of their own feelings

Materials

Us – face, body language and voice

Without a doubt the most important pieces of learning equipment, readily available, are our face, body and voice. It is we and we alone who have the power to change the interactive potential of those with whom we work. Indeed it could be hypothesised that a learner’s success as a potential communicator depends upon how much exposure they have to quality human interaction. We turn to the ‘moves’ of primary caregivers to gain insight into what quality interaction may involve. Research has shown that, in developmental terms, caregivers prove to be our best ‘teachers’. Stern (1977) notes that a mother, when interacting with her infant, spends a great deal of time ‘… playing the natural instruments of her voice, face and body and orchestrating them for and in conjunction with her baby’, who in turn becomes ‘affectively alive’. This surely is just what we hope for during interaction - that our learners become affectively alive. Stern further describes the mother’s behaviour as the best ‘sound and light show on earth’. All this from one human being to another and simply arising out of an innate ability to ‘tune in’ to others at an emotional level.

Essentially, learners must be enabled to become active partners in the process. Our exaggerated facial expression and expectant body language hold every possibility of drawing out a reluctant ‘speaker’. Giving lots of time, using expectant pauses, providing listener feedback and essentially exuding non-verbal messages like, ‘Come on then, I’m listening’ or ‘I’m here, ready and waiting, it’s up to you now - I am listening with my heart as well as my face’ prove far more powerful than using verbal or physical prompts.

Pease (1993) notes that researchers such as Albert Mehrabian (1969,1971) found that the total impact of a message is about 7 per cent verbal, 38 per cent vocal and 55 per cent non-verbal. Thus what ‘really’ happens between interactive partners happens without many words at all. Our body and face in particular provide a mobile stimulus that is continually signalling, often changing and always communicating whether we are aware of it or not. The non-verbal messages we give are likely to be far more powerful than anything we might say.

The voice, too, in all its guises, adds to the free flow of interactions. ‘No matter how important lexico-grammatical meaning eventually becomes, the human brain is first organised or programmed to respond to emotional/intonational aspects of the human voice’ (Dissanayake 1990 in Storr 1992:9). Our attention is drawn to ‘motherese’, a universal ‘vowel drenched’ speaking style (Kuhl and Meltzoff 1997). They note that this is socially pleasing for the infant, both holding its attention and focusing the infant on the talking adult. The interchange between mothers and infants contains elements of metre, rhythm, pitch, volume and lengthening of vowel sounds. It is no wonder then that musical capabilities are seen in infants before linguistic ones (Slobada 1996 in Lowis 1998). The power so evident within the human voice could usefully be harnessed and used in creative ways during episodes of interaction. Music, even in its most basic form, holds a kind of ‘magic’ that can be all-embracing. You don’t need to be a good singer, just a good communicator who is willing to explore and experiment vocally.

Detailed analysis of infant—caregiver behaviour during face-to-face encounters has enabled a greater understanding of the subtle cues that invite, modulate and terminate everyday interactions (Stern 1977). List (1963 in Wood 1992) argues that within everyday interactions a system of visual signals occurs between people. Such findings, says Wood (1973:146), imply that the ‘tuning in’ of speakers and listeners is rooted in some shared biological rhythmic system. This, he further explains, accounts for the possibility of universal synchronisation of mutual movement where unconscious aspects of non-verbal communication effect interaction between partners. We cannot assume learners are reading our unconscious messages, therefore we must constantly monitor our own behaviour while earnestly ‘reading’ theirs. Whether negative or reinforcing, our behaviour can have a huge effect on the interactive performance of learners.

Each person will develop their own particular interactive style dependent upon personality and personal characteristics. ‘Emotional expressiveness, speed of movement, responsiveness, tenseness, playfulness - these and many other personality attributes differentiate people and help to produce distinctive interactive style’ (Nind 20CI0b).

Both partners bring to the interchange their inbred temperamental characteristics, but essentially the facilitator, as more able partner, needs to adjust his or her behaviour in order first to acknowledge the learner’s behaviour. Facilitators, too, need to think about the way they communicate in order to be able to acknowledge the learner’s behaviour. Facilitators also need to think about and take into account the learner’s understanding of non-verbal communication. Face-to-face interaction, synchrony, turn-taking, reciprocal vocalisation and shared emotional states are seen to be characteristic forms of caregiver-infant interactions (Schaffer 1998).

We need to be constantly ready and open for interaction and ready also to use our face, body and voice to reinforce positively the learner, to convey acceptance, patience and a desire to communicate at the learner’s level. Reinforcing head-nods, a face that is full of delight and a look of expectancy can trigger a response from a reluctant ‘speaker’: the kind of non-verbal message that says, ‘Yeah, go on then, I really want to listen to you.’

Social interaction game routines

The study of social development refers to the behaviour patterns, feelings, attitudes and concepts manifest in relation to other people. (Schaffer 1998:1)

In this statement Schaffer embraces the fundamental nature of human interaction, acknowledging that without verbal understanding, elementary social connections are being made. Interactive Music seeks to develop learners’ competence in understanding and managing interpersonal relationships, enabling them to become sociable, friendly and companionable. Fundamental communication strategies, when learned, will support this. Adopting categories of parent-child interactions, both social and didactic, proves to be significant. The social mode refers to physical and verbal strategies adopted during interpersonal exchanges, whereas the didactic method refers to stimulating and arousing by encouraging attention to objects or events in the environment(Bornstein 1983 in Gleason 1989). Each of these modes contributes towards the Interactive Music process.

Making sense of encounters with people helps learners to develop an understanding of their experience within interpersonal situations.

Children must develop powers of recognising and sharing emotional states, of interpreting and anticipating others’ reactions, of understanding the relationships between others, of comprehending the sanctions, prohibitions and accepted practices of their world. (Dunn 1988:5)

This is by no means an easy task for learners with complex and multiple learning difficuIties who may show neither the will nor the ability to interact. Here Mind and Hewett (1994) favour ‘process teaching’, suggesting that social learning cannot be undertaken coldly from a professional-seeming distance. Based on the model of caregiver-infant interaction their approach (Intensive Interaction) is humanistic and respectful. It works! Evaluation of its effectiveness concludes that not only does it add to quality of life but it also helps pupils to learn and apply new skills (Waston and Knight 1991; Nind 1996; Watson and Fisher 1997 in Nind 1999).

Once again the natural model of development informs our thinking and gives us a greater understanding of how learning takes place. Individuals participating; in joint interactive activities learn about the to-and-fro of social interaction. In play, game routines prove useful not only for the pleasure they cause but because ‘they are conventional, oft-repeated routines requiring the mutual involvement of the two participants and are based on clear rules, of which turn-taking and repetition of rounds are most common’(Schaffer 1998)

At a pre-verbal level, game routines are likely to have profound implications for social and cognitive development. Anticipation games, such as ‘Here I come - got you’, offer educators a means for developing cognition. ‘Practical intelligence takes the form, of anticipating a state of affairs’ (Wood 1992:20); if a child can imagine and anticipate a particular consequence, then it is likely that they are able to ‘hold or represent what is sought in mind’ (Wood 1992). Peek-a-boo games give pleasure and intensify social interactive episodes; again there is an element of expecting the unexpected and a means for developing cognition. Games involving give and take can help establish basic conversational rules such as turn-taking and extend opportunities for ‘topic sharing’ (infant-object-adult situations) (Schaffer 1998).

Nind and Hewett (1994) urge adults to find playfulness within themselves and to use it carefully and thoughtfully in their work. Games need to be enjoyable, socially rewarding and fun. ‘The fundamental importance of mutual involvement an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Approach
• 2 The Process
• 3 The Activities
• The Songs
• Bibliography
• Index