Effectiveness of a rhythm and movement approach to improving preschool children's self-regulation

Intervention name: Rhythm and Movement for Self-Regulation (RAMSR) RAMSR is a specific rhythm and movement intervention for young children that aims to support their attentional and emotional regulation skills, as well as mental flexibility, inhibition, and working memory (the executive functions). The intervention was designed by a team led by Kate Williams (Queensland University of Technology) who is a self-regulation researcher and Registered Music Therapist. The team also included a leading Neurologic Music Therapist, and an early childhood music specialist and educator. The intervention design draws on theory and evidence involving beat synchronization, cognitive benefits of formal music training, and music therapy for clinical populations. The theory and rationale for the intervention have been published (Williams, 2018). The intervention is designed to be delivered by early childhood practitioners in a group setting with up to 25 children. The program has a series of four stages, with each stage consisting of four repeated sessions to make up the total of 16 sessions. Sessions are run twice per week meaning the program duration is 8 weeks in total. Each of the four stages is represented by an activity session plan that group leaders use to implement the program. Accompanying the plans are a series of training and activity demonstration videos to support group leaders, all audio tracks required to run the activities, and visual cue cards needed for some activities. In addition, rhythm sticks, and animal castanets are required to implement the sessions. All activities within the session plans are designed to practice key skills of attentional, emotional, and behavioral regulation, inhibition, shifting, and working memory through embedding these skills in coordinated movement activities enhanced by rhythmic auditory cueing. Common activity elements across the sessions included start/stop (inhibition), reversal of instruction (shifting, e.g., move in the silence and freeze in the music), working memory games, and beat synchronization to changing tempos. Original backing tracks provided rhythmic auditory cueing and leverage rhythmic entrainment principles to stimulate more coordinated movement. Within each session plan there are a series of sic activities with the above key elements represented in each: (1) warm-up involving body percussion; (2) becoming familiar involving an adaptation of a familiar early childhood song; (3) moving to the beat involving large gross motor movements; (4) playing to the beat involving simple rhythm sticks or castanets; (5) dancing to the beat involving slightly more complex gross motor movement patterns to activity three of the session and often involving visual motor skills and coordination such as mirroring the shape of rhythm sticks on the floor with bodies; and (6) calming, which includes a series of movements and then stillness accompanied by relaxation music to support physiological entrainment to a calmer state that, targeting embodied emotional regulation. In this trial RAMSR will be implemented in preschool settings by Bachelor degree qualified early childhood educators with groups of up to 22 children aged 3.5 to 4.5 years.