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Innovation, excitement and perseverance

An interdisciplinary approach to research greatly augments the potential for innovation as it typically brings a new lens to the study of a phenomenon. Innovation, new knowledge and the ability to challenge existing knowledge fuels research teams. My PhD students often ask me: How do you do it? Subsequent discussions clarify that what they really are asking is: What keeps you going? How do you persevere? Where do you find the energy and motivation to submit grant applications given the low success rate for funding? What powers you to manage multiple research studies, teach, mentor students, be an editor for a journal and continue to write grants? For me, it is the excitement for innovative research that makes me persevere, whether my own research, my students’ research, or that of scholars who submit to our journal. Vice versa, perseverance leads to the possibility of actually implementing innovative research through funding. Several studies in this issue filled me with excitement because of their innovation. The studies by Johns (p. 197) and Marom, Gilboa and Bodner (p. 175) both used micro-analysis. This, in and of itself, may not be innovative but what made these studies unique is that they used micro-analysis to examine the musical parameters of phenomena that have not previously been studied through a musical lens. Unni Tanum Johns used micro-analysis to study, through a musical framework, the microactions in child psychotherapeutic encounters. I was surprised to read that even though micro-analysis has been used plenty in infant development research and even in the field of adult psychotherapy, careful analysis of therapeutic interactions at the micro-level has been absent in child psychotherapy. Yet, understanding the micro-shifts that take place in the therapeutic process can offer important insights into the child’s individual therapeutic development. This is furthermore the first study to bring greater understanding of the musical parameters of the intersubjective encounter between the psychotherapist and the child and the implications of this for therapeutic growth. Maya Marom and colleagues micro-analyzed the intersubjective and musical characteristics of echolalia in children with autism. Although echolalia has been studied for years, the innovation of their work lies in the fact that they meticulously analyzed the musical characteristics of each child’s echolalic expressions with the aim to better understand the purpose of the echolalic speech. This enabled them to identify various interactive functions of echolalia characterized by distinct musical parameters for each child. Their findings are most intriguing as they hold great potential for helping clinicians and caregivers understand why a child may use echolalia. This, in turn, may contribute to a more accurate identification of the child’s in-the-moment needs. Jennifer Bibb and Katrina Skewes McFerran’s grounded theory study (p. 235) focused on uncovering conditions and contextual factors of group singing that