Effect of Music Therapy on the Emotional Expressivity of Children and Adolescents Who Have Experienced Abuse or Neglect

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of music therapy on the emotional expressivity of children and adolescents who have experienced abuse or neglect. All participants (N=22) had been removed from their homes and placed in group foster homes. Female participants were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Due the request of the foster guardians to not separate the male participants, the males in this study served as their own control in a pre-test, post-test wait-list control design. Treatment interventions consisted of lyric analysis, songwriting, improvisational instrument playing, and musical games in which participants were asked to encode and decode various emotions. Assessment measures included the following: the Emotional Expressivity Scale (EES; Kring, Smith, & Neale, 1994): a 17-question self-report measure in which participants read and rated statements about their emotional expression on a 6-point Likert scale; observational ratings by an expert panel of judges, who rated both the degree and appropriateness of participants' videotaped emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and surprise); and a post-session questionnaire for foster parents to determine whether they perceived any effects the music therapy treatment had on the participants. Results indicate a statistically significant difference in EES scores between control and experimental conditions, and an increase in both the degree and appropriateness of all five emotions expressed by participants in the experimental condition, several of which were statistically significant.