Music Therapy: Why Auditory Processing is Developed through Movement and Music

This post contains information regarding the benefits of music therapy and movement for children with learning challenges. Affiliate links are included for your convenience. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

Children do not come in perfect, orderly little packages. They come with diversity, spontaneity, energy and amazing personality. Some come with physical disabilities, learning challenges and/or behavioral issues. With each of these differences, it can be difficult to find the right intervention and programs that help children in the classroom so they can reach their potential. More than 20 years ago when I was trying to find the right intervention for my own children, I tried just about everything to see what would help them do well and improve in school. Some programs worked, while others didn’t.

I soon found that there is no one magic program that fits every child. In fact, some programs that work for many students, don’t work for others. Depending on the child and their specific needs, we must find where the gaps and breakdowns are before integrating methods that help. More importantly, as you begin looking for programs and methods to help your child or student, if you come across those that tell you “this program will fix all our child’s problems,” it’s probably too good to be true.

Every program and method we use is only one piece to the greater puzzle. It typically takes several types of programs to help each area of the child’s academic development. For some children, we have to start helping them at their lower subcortical levels because they have developmental delays, problems with speech and language, issues with vestibular, fine motor and proprioception, while others only need help at the higher subcortical levels used for reading, writing, math and comprehension.

Movement Therapy Works

One constant intervention that seems to be a “miracle program” for many kids is movement. Movement-based activities help your child’s brain become a “whole” brain. It works the left and right sides of the brain to build those neural connections, while also building the brain from top to bottom and back to front, which are areas that improve expressive language, retention, comprehension, emotional grounding, fight or flight responses, reasoning, critical thinking and much more. If you have a child that struggles in school, you may want to begin here to see if there are gaps in learning due to a breakdown with those neural connections. However, while movement can be a critical piece to your child’s academic puzzle, it is not the only answer.

Movement can do wonders for your child’s vestibular, visual, and proprioception systems along with hand-eye coordination, fine motor and retained primitive reflexes, but it still does not do a complete job of helping your child with auditory processing (how your child retains their letters and sounds, remembers how to follow directions, can recall details needed for a test or homework assignment).

Enter Music Therapy

Because movement therapy doesn’t correct all your child or student’s academic struggles, you may want to incorporate music-based therapy to open up the child’s auditory for higher learning, especially when it is added in conjunction with movement.

For example, say the teacher tells your child that show-in-tell is coming up and they can bring something to share with the class. She then proceeds to go over what is appropriate to bring and what is not. Your child must first use their auditory to acknowledge that they know what show-in-tell is and how it works. Then your child must use their auditory to remember that the teacher said show-in-tell was this Friday and they have to retain what was appropriate to bring and what was not. Finally, they must use their auditory to store that information and recall or repeat the details to you when they come home from school.

You’d be surprised at how many children struggle with this on a daily basis and often can’t remember what they need to do with their homework or can’t recall facts and details when they get ready to take a test or exam. They are usually the student that asks the teacher, “Now what am I supposed to do again?” or “What was that assignment?”

Many parents often say they will practice spelling words and letters before bed at night, they see their child making progress, and then in the morning it’s like their child had never seen those same sight words and letters before in their life. The retention just isn’t there. This is the reason and purpose behind using music-based therapy programs to help children store, retain, recall and remember facts and details.

In addition, music-based therapy may be able to help some students with speech and language problems. Some students with non-verbal issues may even make tremendous progress and began babbling, saying words, and eventually progressed to full conversations during the movement and music phases of therapy.

However, not just any music will work. As much as I love Mozart and there are many learning benefits that come from all types of classical music, to get your child’s auditory working and functioning correctly for reading, writing and math, acoustically filtered music is vital.

Programs like Soundsory uses rhythmic therapy techniques that have helped thousands of children struggling with learning challenges stay off medication and improve their academics. With extensive research and case studies, the impact sound therapy had on improving attention, auditory processing disorders, ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, social and behavioral challenges, and many other learning issues speaks for itself.

Soundsory music therapy combined with movement therapy improves the subcortical levels (lower levels) of the brain, which are used for motor skills, attention and behavior, and other developmental systems. In addition, many learning centers across the country and throughout the world have used bone conduction (sound therapy) with traditional movement therapy as a way to help children with Sensory Processing Disorders, to help kids get the “sensory diet” they need to regulate their bodies for learning in the classroom.

Jeanette Farmer, handwriting remediation specialist, talks about the correlation between music and better handwriting and how it helps the brain. She says, “By using movement and music to activate and engage the brain’s lower levels, the regulated stimulation is critical for at-risk, learning disabled students as it primes the higher brain for the learning process.”

 

Why Music Improves Academics

“Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.” Plato

There are many vast benefits to utilizing music in one’s life. Music can be a powerful tool to calm the senses and it provides relief in a stressful world. While music is often tied to calming the body, it is also linked to improving intelligence and academics. In Good Music Brighter Children, Sharlene Habermeyer describes the dynamic connection between music and learning. She says, “When music is taught comprehensively and sequentially in the schools, it increases math, science, reading, history, and SAT scores.”

Habermeyer also discusses when a child is learning to read he first uses his ears to decipher how to verbalize the word. The auditory cortex must be ignited to read words on the page. For example, if I held up the word “cat” in Chinese, the child may try to say the word, but until someone speaks the word to him, they do not know how to pronounce it correctly. When a child is learning to read, ears come first, eyes come second.

Music strengthens the auditory cortex, the part of the temporal lobe that processes aural information. Logically, if music strengthens this important part of the brain, it should reinforce reading development. There is a relationship between strong reading test scores and music instruction. In the Journal of Aesthetic Education it describes a reliable association between reading test scores and music training after analysis of 24 case studies. Scientists at the University of California at Irvine and University of Wisconsin also show how music provides extensive brain-developing value. It can increase memory and concentration.

This is another great example of why children, especially those with learning challenges, should participate in music programs at school or play a musical instrument in addition to the bone conduction and music therapy mentioned above.

When children study music, patterns within the mind are altered. This has an impact on how learning processes are developed in the first years of life. (Source: Laura Saari, “The Sound of Learning, “ The Orange County Register.” 1997). Music involves a structured sequence of patterns, which, in turn, leads to improvement with spatial skills. Music lessons and spatial skills are exercising the same brain circuits. Why are spatial skills important? Spatial-temporal reasoning is the mental ability to see a dimensional pattern and to understand how each part or piece fits together in a logical manner. This kind of reasoning is used in higher levels of math and science and is key for subjects involving ratios, proportions, physics, and advanced science concepts.

In this Psychology of Music article, it describes improvements made with music and children that have dyslexia. The literacy problems associated with dyslexia are based behind deficits in motor and cognitive processes, which are temporal processing problems. Because music training requires accurate timing skills, it can improve temporal processing functioning. Some work in this area shows encouraging results with relation to music therapy and helping dyslexic individuals.

Music is Key

From developing math skills to focus and higher reasoning, music can substantially assist in many areas when it comes to the education of your child. Most children are naturally drawn to rhythm and sound, which makes it easier to incorporate music in their everyday lives.

For additional articles and studies that support music therapy as a way to improve learning, please read the following:

• Improve creativity
• Significantly improve motor skills
• Boost verbal skills
• Enhance higher reasoning
• Raise visual attention
• Creates a high focus learning state within the brain
• Improve memory
• Increasing attention
• Strengthening reading development

Music Therapy

For more information about music therapy and how it can help your child with other areas of learning development, click here.  Remember, the most effective way to use this program is with a combination of music and movement therapy.

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Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs