All living things do exist through the movement. Dance itself is also originated from the movement. Movement is the regular response to human's internal emotion and external environment as an exposure of their thought and feeling. Dance had been used ...
All living things do exist through the movement. Dance itself is also originated from the movement. Movement is the regular response to human's internal emotion and external environment as an exposure of their thought and feeling. Dance had been used as an expression tool for human's emotion and incantatory ceremony from the primitive times because it was baed on the movement itself. It had also been used as nonverbal communication skill representing not only conscious but also unconscious mentality.
For that reasons, dance therapy is one of the classical psychotherapy having the longest history. This therapy has been used in treatment for the subjects who are socially isolated and have abnormal behavior due to physical or psychological defects. The spirit of dance therapy that helps to express the inner world creatively and promotes social or emotional maturation has something in common with the concept of special physical exercise. Moreover the dance therapy program for disabled person, especially children with Down syndrome also include the concept of children first education, personalized joint education, ability first education, and object-based education.
The object of this study is to evaluate therapeutic effect of dance therapy for children with Down syndrome when it is done in a special form making all-round education actively participated by not only teacher but also children themselves. It has great significance to find out the therapeutic effect of dance therapy on the children with Down syndrome in Korea where the dance therapy is not generalized and applied in very limited situations. Therefore this study is definitely distinguished from the previous theoretical programs of dance therapy for mentally retarded person by its value of clinical study and presentation of newly developed movement adjusted to special objects with Down syndrome.
To evaluate the effect of dance therapy for 8 weeks on locomotor skills and emotional development of children with Down syndrome following study was performed.
The treatment group were 11 children with Down syndrome participating physical training class for disabled persons held by Seoul "S" university graduate school for special athletics after getting informed consent from their parents. And the control group were age-matched 11 children with Down syndrome in Seoul "J" school.
Before treatment in all study subjects, the baseline locomotor skill was evaluated by test of gross motor development(TGMD-2) and the baseline emotional development was examined by House-Tree-Person (HTP) test.
During 8-weeks study period, the 120-minutes dance therapy program was applied to the treatment group three times in a week. After 4-weeks treatment and at the time of completion, the TGMD-2 and HTP test was also done as the same manner of baseline evaluation.
The variables of TGMD-2 were run, gallop, hop, leap, horizontal jump and slide. Pictures of house, tree and person were analyzed in HTP test.
Analysis of their locomotor skill by TGMD-2 revealed that all 6 variables were gradually improved in proportion to the sessions of dance therapy program. The effect of dance therapy on locomotor skill was evident at 8th week than at 4th week and dance therapy was proved superior treatment with statistical significance.
Following results are obtained by analysis of HTP test concerning the effect of dance therapy on emotional development in these children.
There was no statistically significant improvement of tree variable during the whole study period.
The tree & person variables were gradually improved in proportion to the sessions of dance therapy program. The effect of dance therapy on emotional development was evident at 8th week than at 4th week.
In conclusion, dance therapy could improve locomotor skill in children with Down syndrome. Moreover, this might induce proper emotional development in these handicapped children.
In Korea we are in the poor circumstance regarding lack of specialists, educational institution, research materials and clinical study of dance therapy for special group such as children with Down syndrome. Therefore we have to establish the fundamental theory of dance therapy and train more specialists for this therapy. And we have to evaluate the specific medical effect of dance therapy for many other disabled persons.