Podcast

Music Therapy is not only helpful for stressed out adults, but it also a very good treatment for autistic children. Music therapy for autistic children was an aid introduced to help with communication skills. Autistic children are kids with a disorder of having a difficult time communicating. They also have a difficult time socializing with other people. By not being able to communicate what they want, these children become very stressed. Autistic children ignore or reject the attempts of social contact made by others. Music therapy helps to stop the social withdrawal by an initial object relation with a musical instrument. Instead of viewing the instrument as threatening, they are intrigued by the shape, feel, and sound of it. The musical instrument provides an initial point of contact between the autistic child and the person experimenting what is trying to be said. Music therapy has to be carefully planned out and evaluated to suit the specific needs of each individual autistic child. What may be positively experienced by one child may be negative to another autistic child. When music therapy was introduced it gave hope to allow these types of kids with expressing how they feel. Music therapy allowed autistics the opportunity to experience non-threatening outside stimulation, as they don’t engage in direct human contract. I found one article saying, “Music therapy addresses some of the core problems of people with ASD.” ASD is Autism Spectrum Disorder. This article was an experiment to see if music therapy was successful.
Their background was: The central impairments with autistic spectrum disorder include social interaction and communication. Music therapy uses music and its elements to enable communication and expression, thus attempting to address some of the core problems of people with ASD.
 The results of the three studies were, music therapy was superior to the placebo when testing the verbal and gestural communicative skills.
Each experiment included the musical activities of:
 Listening to music and/or musical creation
 Playing musical instruments (any musical instrument)
 Moving to music
 Singing
Music therapy has also helped with being able to allow the autistic child control the functioning of their teeth, jaw, lips, and tongue. Playing a flute allowed the child to produce some speech vocalizations. Not in all cases but in some.
Music therapy in conclusion:
 taught social skills
 improved language comprehension
 encouraged the desire to communicate
 made some expression clear
 reduced non-communicative speech

Peer Review

As I read Amy's draft 2 so far everything seemed like it was coming along. When I was reading her paper I thought it was already good enough to post with a few minor grammatical errors. It gave me the push to start working really hard on mine. She has her paper almost all done, and I only have like half of mine done. I liked reading about the sleep disorders she mentioned. I remember she had sleep apnea and insomnia. I don't remember the other one she is going to talk about, but when the entire paper is done and revised, I'm looking forward to reading it.
As I was looking over my review, Amy gave me a good review. However, I wish she would have been very critical. I know I did not to that to hers. But i feel weird criticizing someone's work, that they tried hard to do good on. Plus i didn't really find anything wrong with hers. But I know I have to go over my paper, and start making everything flow and come together. I am working on that.

I had my conference with jela. I am to general with my research paper. I need to get more into detail and tell everyone what i am going through step by step. I need to have intext citations. And i was told that the endorphins part was just placed their and to in a way get rid of it.

Audience and such...

I want my audience to range from 18-25. Everyone has stress, but they have different reasons for it. The age group I choose has me in it, so I can relate a little better. I can, in a way, feel exactly what they are going through. The age group I choose has stress from work, school and home life.
I want to define exactly what stress is. I'm pretty sure people can already define their own definition of stress but, stress is the body's reaction to change. The change can be good and it can be bad. Everyone experiences it. It just all depends on the type of person you are to figure out how to cope with what's going on.
I hope my audience can learn of healthy ways to alleviate stress. The three ways I want to explore are running, yoga, and listening to music. Running gives a steady state of mind to relax. When people run, our bodies release Endorphins. Endorphins have a similar chemical structure to morphine, which also allows the body to go into a meditative state. Yoga was meant to equalize and balance bodies and minds. And the third area is music as a therapy. Music alters brainwaves. When listening to fast beats, the music manipulates the brains to copy, it does the same thing when listening to slow music. When listening to slow music, it can put the body in a relaxation state. Music is known to have a more effective effect when it is played at a high volume. I want my audience to know they have more options than to break down and possibly do something they can not rewind. I want to gain knowledge by researching as much as I can and providing my knowledge to them. I want my audience to practice a healthy way of erasing their stress.
My purpose I want to achieve when doing this to find out why some people choose a way out the cant take back. I want to inform people that just because you think you know someone on the outside does not mean they have and inside to match. Stress causes so much pain and can lead to depression. Some people are just better at hiding their emotional states. I want to sound like I have a serious tone, so people know this can become dangerous. I'm writing this in an academic style so that people know I do not have all the answers and that I'm up for researching and gaining more knowledge.