Abstract:
This study examined the recall from viewing a music therapy session by five different cohorts of
students (22 graduate music therapy students, 8 graduate art therapy, 10 creative and expressive
therapies students, 10 counselling students and 17 undergraduate music students). The study was
part of a larger program of research that investigated how learning occurs in music therapy. The
recall task was based on viewing a 3-minute excerpt of a professionally produced video showing
clinical music therapy with narration. Participants (n = 67) produced 277 comments that were
categorised under the following headings: music context, therapy context, client/therapist actions,
visual context, client classification/health setting, and unclassified. There were significant
differences between the average number of recalls for each category. The categories of music and
therapy produced the highest number of recalls compared to other categories with music therapy
and music students rating the highest overall scores. The findings of this study supported a model
of specific learning that occurs in different domains of knowledge and showed the impact of one's
training in the perception of a new situation.
