Task-Dependent Mechanisms in the Perception of Music and Speech: Domain-Specific Transfer Effects of Elementary School Music Education

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that active engagement in musical activities benefits auditory and cognitive processing. However, it is still unclear whether musical experience improves domain-general mechanisms reflected in superior functioning in language or the enhancement is selective and limited to musical abilities. In the present study, we evaluated the transfer effect of general elementary school music education on the development of linguistic abilities. The relationship between specific musical auditory skills, phonological awareness, and reading was investigated in 30 second-grade children who attended either a class with an intensive music curriculum or a class with a regular curriculum. Results indicated no significant differences between the music and the regular class, suggesting that 1 year of Kodály-based classroom music education is not enough to yield relevant improvement in musical and linguistic abilities. Although there was no considerable relationship between reading and musical abilities, phoneme deletion accuracy was specifically associated with tonal memory. These findings suggest that similar cognitive mechanisms may be required to process melodic and phonological sequences. Therefore, we assume that task-dependent mechanisms may exist in melody and speech perception, which might account for the presence of inconsistent findings in the music transfer literature.