The purpose of Musical Interaction is to create rapport, an experience that leads to many benefits for both a person with special needs and the person that cares for them. These benefits include:
Meeting fundamental psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, needs that must be met for a person to have a good level of wellbeing
Building the positive relationships that are essential for high quality care and education
The learning of fundamental social skills for people at an early stage of communication development
Finding new starting points for interaction
Enjoying being together
Enjoying a musical experience
All of these benefits stem from the experience of rapport. Finding rapport is also the central experience of intensive interaction and has three ingredients:
1. Mutual social attention
2. Mutual co-ordination
3. Mutual positivity
(Rosenthal and Tickle - Degnan, 1990)