User:Musical Echolalia

Musical Echolalia is a term first coined by Dr. Krystal Demaine, PhD, MT-BC in her doctoral dissertation entitled Musical Echolalia and Non-Verbal Children with Autism (2012). In her dissertation Demaine described how 12 non-verbal children with autism, aged 4-8, echoed live and improvised musical sounds in a single 30 minute music making session. Demaine (2012) defined musical echolalia as "the demonstration of the immediate, relative, imitation of a pitch, melody or, rhythm sequence of a musical phrase performed through vocal, instrumental, or physical expression. Non-musical utterances or noises such as echoic or imitative speech sounds and unrelated motor movements were not included in this study as musical echolalia.  Each child’s immediate imitation of discrete musical elements was deemed musical echolalia; thus, elements of pitch, rhythm, voice, musical instrument, and physical expression were included in this study.  Based on these criteria seven different sub-types of musical echolalia were identified.  Inferential statistics and single factor ANOVA were used to compare the frequency of musical stimuli and musical echolalia, the social responses that occurred after musical echolalia, and the potential associations across gender and age."