THE JOY OF THE MUSIC AND BEHAVIORISM?

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hidden hearts

Many who have spent time building, studying, or implementing autism interventions, recognize the behavioral roots of Precision Songs and Tuneville. Others are surprised to learn the majority of our lyrics come straight from ABA (applied behavior analysis) drill books. While we honor and greatly appreciate the principles and amazing outcomes of ABA, we have found ABA to have a few major practical drawbacks: ABA programs require immense dedication for new skill acquisition through drills and almost equal dedication to retain a skill through relentless review. Motivation is a recurrent problem, not to mention the financial burden and lack of trustworthy practitioners. Even more disheartening, we have personally seen consistent, successful behavioral programs degenerate into out of balance control games. Practitioners find out what is reinforcing and then dole it out in exchange for compliance. An intelligent student then learns to withhold his heart, not showing what truly motivates and excites him. This withholding blocks the path to discovering the joy of learning for its own sake, the optimal reinforcing experience. Precision Songs is a powerful path back to rediscovering  this joy by imbedding critical lessons in catchy tunes. Tuneville goes one step further by combining the joy of music with the fun of the ipad. Initial phases of learning are purely self-directed causing the user to forget, if he realizes in the first place, that underneath all the fun are the hard core principles of the most researched based learning intervention - ABA.

The Tuneville Protocol

Tuneville is a fun place for kids to visit, to the extent that learning seems a side benefit that the adults in their lives secretly celebrate. Yet for children with language disabilities, Tuneville is a such serious intervention that it merits a protocol:

1. Play only the first version of a song until a student is thoroughly familiar with all the lyrics. Then move on to the second version of the lesson. This way, the missing lyrics will  be an obvious omission and a student may feel immediately compelled to fill-in. If not, classmates, caregivers, siblings or teachers should model the missing lyrics. Keep in mind that fading these verbal prompts will be crucial for independence.
2. Once a student is regularly filling in missing lyrics with the music, move quickly to the third version of the song. If necessary, make an occasional return to the second track as a reward for listening to the third.
3. After a student is thoroughly familiar with the third version of the lesson, move on to the fourth.  Again, modeling fill-ins may be necessary initially. 

Wherever your student is on the protocol, continually expand the student's abilities through the following techniques:

• Apply the song’s content to everyday situations. Create situations if necessary and sing the song during that activity.
• Sing or chant lines of a song out of order and alternate between singing and speaking lyrics in an everyday voice. 
• If your student has provided fill-ins before, sung or spoken, expect a response. 
• Give plenty of time for processing and praise every step of success.

How the Brain Deals with Gaps in Music

Much about music remains shrouded in mystery, but light is being shed as brain scanning and other tools of measurement advance in their precision. A 2005 study out of Dartmouth College* used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate the physiology of brain activity when blanks are left in familiar tunes. Muting short gaps of familiar music was sufficient to trigger auditory imagery showing that the phenomenon was automatic and irresistible. Pictures (c) and (d) below show that silent gaps embedded in familiar songs induce greater activation in auditory association areas than silent gaps embedded in unknown songs.

So, when children listen repeatedly to Tuneville track A, they become very familiar with how a song ought to be. When track B introduces gaps for students to take turns filling in the blanks, the brain literally “lights up.” The bottom right image is a picture of the obligatory, irresistible urge for completion as it shows up on a MRI.

*D.J. Kraemer, C.M. Neil, Kelley, W.M. and Green, A.G., “The Sound of Silence,” Nature, Vol. 434 (2005).

TUNEVILLE TIPS FOR FOSTERING EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE

After track A of a Tuneville song is completely familiar, the urge for completion when track B is played will become so strong that most kids will fill in the blanks with little or no prompting from caretakers. To encourage the selection of track B, Tuneville purposefully puts engaging interactive games only at the end of tracks that include blanks. Still, since some individuals need further encouragement, here are a couple tips for overcoming this resistance:

1. Take turns. Let a child choose a track and then you you choose one. Obviously you will choose a track that presents the opportunity for a fill-in. Model filling in the blank in a jovial, happy manner, and see if the child will follow your example.
2. Use the pause button. Tuneville purposefully omitted fast-forward and rewind buttons in its programming but we definitely saw the benefit of a pause button. Some children need more time - especially if language or enunciation is still an emerging skill. Give the few extra seconds needed for success and then celebrate little steps of progress.

PUTTING THE FUN IN FUNCTIONAL

Tuneville is a great place to go, but underneath all of the fun lessons is a rock solid foundation of research. By combining music with engaging visuals, we help students make meaningful steps to improve daily living. We put the fun in functional. Other companies might produce beautiful arrangements of the Hokey Pokey and Hickory Dickory Dock but since reaching the often literal mind of someone with autism is our primary goal, we won’t mix in lines about cows jumping over the moon, men selling muffins, or mice sprinting up a clock. We avoid the use of nonsense nursery rhymes because the special needs mind is often so literal. If it's a Tuneville song, the lyrics are functional.