Using Music Therapy in (Re) Habilitation of Prelingual Deaf Cochlear Implant Children

Samia E Bassiouny*, Marwa M Saleh, Dina AE Elrefaie and Mary S Girgis

DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2017.01.000127

Received: May 29, 2017   Published: June 13, 2017

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Abstract

The efficacy of music therapy in management of various communicative disorders, (including hearing impairment) is well established, still there is no available and documented schedule for rehabilitation of hearing impaired children with the help of music intonation therapy in Arabic language. The exact role of music therapy is not yet validated on Arabic speaking children having hearing impairment.

Objective: To test the efficacy of a specially designed music program to be used in (re) Habilitation of cochlear implant children during their first years of auditory habilitation in order to improve their communicative abilities.

Materials and methods: The study was carried out on 20 Arabic-speaking pre-lingual deaf children with cochlear implants (for not less than a year), aged between 3 and 6 years. They were subjected to our innovated music therapy program for 3 month (2 sessions/ week) and were assessed at the end using auditory closure test for each song.

Results: The results revealed a highly significant relationship between the introduced songs and the auditory closure test results, which reveals the acquisition of new active vocabularies.

Conclusion: Music therapy is a fruitful way of learning and transforming information. In cochlear implanted children, it was found that music therapy is beneficial in increasing their size of active vocabulary, thus enriching their expressive language.

Keywords: Music therapy; Cochlear Implant

Introduction | Objective | Materials and Methods | Results | Discussion | Conclusion | Recommendations | References | Tables |