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The social development and response to social skill interventions among children with ASD and comorbid intellectual disability (ID) is not well understood. Music therapy is a systematic process of intervention, wherein a therapist may help clients promote their social skills by using musical experience. The proposed study will address limited research evidence on music therapy as an intervention for social functioning in children with ASD with mild to borderline ID.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Method<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>A randomized controlled trial (RCT) with two parallel groups of 40 children each (1:1 allocation ratio) is planned. Participants will receive 45\u2009min of music therapy or non-musical intervention targeting social skills once a week for 12\u2009weeks. Primary outcome measures will be independent ratings on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale and parent ratings on the Social Responsiveness Scale-2. Linear mixed-effects models for these two outcome measures will be created for data collected at 2-week pre-intervention, 2-week post-intervention, and 4-month post-intervention sessions. In-session behaviors at the first and last intervention will be videotaped and coded offline and compared. Pretreatment neural response of quantitative electroencephalograms (qEEG) to social scenes will be used to predict the outcomes of musical and non-musical social skill interventions, whereas qEEG responses to music will be used to predict the effectiveness of musical social skill intervention.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Discussion<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>If neural markers of social skill development are found, then the long-term goal is to develop individualized intervention based on pre-treatment markers to maximize treatment efficacy. The proposed study\u2019s results may also suggest directions to development and provision of music therapy services in Hong Kong.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n<jats:title>Trial registration<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>ClinicalTrials.gov (<jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" ext-link-type=\"uri\" xlink:href=\"https:\/\/clinicaltrials.gov\/ct2\/show\/record\/NCT04557488\">NCT04557488<\/jats:ext-link>). Registered September 21, 2020.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12887-020-02454-6","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,5]],"date-time":"2020-12-05T04:51:02Z","timestamp":1607143862000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":21,"title":["Music therapy as social skill intervention for children with comorbid ASD and ID: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2165-6813","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yen Na","family":"Yum","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Way Kwok-Wai","family":"Lau","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kean","family":"Poon","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Fuk Chuen","family":"Ho","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,5]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"2454_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"7","DOI":"10.1186\/2040-2392-4-7","volume":"4","author":"X Sun","year":"2013","unstructured":"Sun X, Allison C, Matthews FE, Sharp SJ, Auyeung B, Baron-Cohen S, Brayne C. 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A research assistant will obtain written informed consent and oral assent from parents and participants, respectively, before participants enroll into the interventions. All personal information of potential and enrolled participants will be collected only for research purpose and will be kept in strict confidentiality by the investigators and research assistants. Personal information will be stored separately from other research data and will be linked through codes known only to authorized research assistants. Hard copy materials will be kept in locked compartments and soft copy materials will be stored with password encryption. Videos with identifiable information will not be shown in public. All data will be kept for 5\u2009years past completion of the study, then the data will be destroyed.","order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare that they have no competing interests.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"545"}}