Abstract
Early language and reading abilities have been shown to correlate with a variety of musical skills and elements of music perception in children. It has also been shown that reading impaired children can show difficulties with music perception. However, it is still unclear to what extent different aspects of music perception are associated with language and reading abilities. Here we investigated the relationship between cognitive-linguistic abilities and a music discrimination task that preserves an ecologically valid musical experience. 43 Portuguese-speaking students from an elementary school in Brazil participated in this study. Children completed a comprehensive cognitive-linguistic battery of assessments. The music task was presented live in the music classroom, and children were asked to code sequences of four sounds on the guitar. Results show a strong relationship between performance on the music task and a number of linguistic variables. A principle component analysis of the cognitive-linguistic battery revealed that the strongest component (Prin1) accounted for 33% of the variance and Prin1 was significantly related to the music task. Highest loadings on Prin1 were found for reading measures such as Reading Speed and Reading Accuracy. Interestingly, 22 children recorded responses for more than four sounds within a trial on the music task, which was classified as Superfluous Responses (SR). SR was negatively correlated with a variety of linguistic variables and showed a negative correlation with Prin1. When analyzing children with and without SR separately, only children with SR showed a significant correlation between Prin1 and the music task. Our results provide implications for the use of an ecologically valid music-based screening tool for the early identification of reading disabilities in a classroom setting.
Highlights
Processing both music and language require similar perceptual and cognitive processes within and outside of the auditory domain including the processing of pitch and rhythm, rapid auditory processing, selective attention, or working memory
When analyzing children with and without Superfluous Responses (SR) separately, only children with SR showed a significant correlation between Prin1 and the music task
Scoring of performance on Musical Sequence Transcription Task (MSTT) revealed a large number of cases of what we term SR, i.e., more than four responses recorded on a single trial of MSTT, with 22 of the 43 participants displaying at least one occurrence of SR
Summary
Processing both music and language require similar perceptual and cognitive processes within and outside of the auditory domain including the processing of pitch and rhythm, rapid auditory processing, selective attention, or working memory. Musicianship has been shown to improve or correlate positively with language and literacy skills in numerous areas such as phonological awareness (Lamb and Gregory, 1993; Anvari et al, 2002; Burnham and Brooker, 2002; Montague, 2002; Peynircioglu et al, 2002; Overy, 2003; Norton et al, 2005; David et al, 2007; Foregeard et al, 2008; Holliman et al, 2010; Dege and Schwarzer, 2011; Moritz et al, 2012), second-language phonological ability (Slevc and Miyake, 2006), and reading ability (Hurwitz et al, 1975; Barwick et al, 1989; Lamb and Gregory, 1993; Douglas and Willatts, 1994; Gardiner et al, 1996; Standley and Hughes, 1997; Anvari et al, 2002; Register et al, 2007) Most of these studies have been conducted with schoolage or adult subjects but positive relationships between musical ability/activity and underlying component skills of reading have been reported before reading instruction starts (e.g., Fisher and McDonald, 2001; Moritz et al, 2012). Musicians have demonstrated heightened ability over non-musicians in cognitive processes such as tonal and verbal working memory (Chan et al, 1998; Kilgour et al, 2000; Ho et al, 2003; Franklin et al, 2008; Schulze et al, 2011) and subcortical processing of speech has been found to align with reading and music aptitude in children (Strait et al, 2011)
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