Using Music in Teaching Social Skills to Mentally Retarded Subjects

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which Melodies to Assist Social Interaction (MASI) would affect the social skills performance of the educable mentally retarded. The study employed a pretest-posttest control group design with an N of 27 mentally-retarded subjects. It also employed a one-group pretest-posttest design with an N of 8 non-mentally retarded subjects. All of the subjects received a pre- and post-score for their social skills performance level. Nineteen of the mentally-retarded subjects and all eight non-mentally retarded subjects received the MASI social skills teaching program as part of their regular curriculum. The pre- and post-treatment performance was analyzed by a correlated means t-test. An analysis of covariance was used in which the posttest means were compared using the pretest means as a covariate. It was concluded that MASI did not have an impact, positive or negative, on the social skills performance level of the subjects