Special section: music therapy for people with autistic spectrum disorder

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) has been one of the first and most important areas of application of music therapy. Pioneers in music therapy (e.g., Alvin, 2000) discovered early on that people with ASD can be reached through music even when verbal language is not possible. Furthermore, as impairment in social communication is one of the main features of ASD, it seemed natural to consider a medium such as music, particularly active music-making with a therapist who is specially trained to focus on the communicative aspects of music therapy. Lately (decades after the work of the pioneers) new support for these ideas has come from research about the musical qualities of early mother–infant communication (Stern, 2010; Trevarthen & Malloch, 2000). All of these arguments apply to other fields as well, such as people with serious mental disorders, but they apply especially, or perhaps more clearly and directly, to ASD. The possibilities of music therapy to help people with this pervasive developmental disorder have fascinated people for a long time. At the same time, research evidence is still limited, and it is only partly reassuring that this is also true for other treatment options. In an overview of Cochrane’s reviews of any treatment for ASD, Wheeler et al. (2008) found that ‘‘all included reviews call for more and better evidence,’’ and that only ‘‘risperidone, parent mediated early intervention and music therapy [. . .] show at least one statistically significant effect’’ (p. 11). ASD, it seems, is not only difficult to treat, but is also difficult to research. This issue of the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy has a special section on music therapy for ASD, with three new articles that span the range of research approaches, from a theoretical review (Dimitriadis & Smeijsters), through single case research focusing on assessment methods (Raglio et al.), to a randomized controlled trial (Gattino et al.). Theo Dimitriadis and Henk