Evaluation of Musical Playing Ability of Children with Intellectual Disabilities by Using Keyboard-Playing-Software with the Figurenotes System

Figurenotes is an intuitive music notation system developed for people who have difficulty reading musical score such as people with intellectual disabilities and it is a simple system to uses color and shape to convey all the information of traditional music notation. The aim of this study is to clarify the effectiveness of application software to learn musical performance using the Figurenotes system and to identify the causes of stumbling in musical instrument performance in people with intellectual disabilities. In this research, we created a keyboard-playing application software of the tablet terminal with a learning support function using the Figurenotes system. 9 subjects aged 7 to 16 with intellectual disabilities used the application software for one month. Then, the number of correctly played sounds and the number of taps of the keyboard were obtained from the usage history. As a result of the analysis, the mistake factors of the musical performance of children with intellectual disabilities were 1) tapping according to the rhythm, 2) matching of the symbol for a musical score and 3) quickness of the eye and hand cooperative operation. Furthermore, from the questionnaire of the music behavior, the children who could tap and match the symbol according to the rhythm had a high degree of development of the musical aspect. Thus, it was found that two factors, playing in accordance with the rhythm and symbol matching, particularly affected the development of musical learning.