The Effect of a Music Program on Phonological Awareness in Preschoolers

Gudrun Schwarzer,Franziska Degé

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00124

Abstract

The present experiment investigated the effect of a music program on phonological awareness in preschoolers. In particular, the effects of a music program and a phonological skills program on phonological awareness were compared. If language and music share basic processing mechanisms, the effect of both programs on enhancing phonological awareness should be similar. Forty-one preschoolers (22 boys) were randomly assigned to a phonological skills program, a music program, and a control group that received sports training (from which no effect was expected). Preschoolers were trained for 10 min on a daily basis over a period of 20 weeks. In a pretest, no differences were found between the three groups in regard to age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and phonological awareness. Children in the phonological skills group and the music group showed significant increases in phonological awareness from pre- to post-test. The children in the sports group did not show a significant increase from pre- to post-test. The enhancement of phonological awareness was basically driven by positive effects of the music program and the phonological skills program on phonological awareness for large phonological units. The data suggests that phonological awareness can be trained with a phonological skills program as well as a music program. These results can be interpreted as evidence of a shared sound category learning mechanism for language and music at preschool age.

Highlights

Language and music are specific to humans and share several characteristics such as the use of the auditory domain as the input path and the organization of discrete perceptual elements into structured sequences (Patel, 2003). McMullen and Saffran (2004) postulated that language and music share relevant processing mechanisms, especially in childhood
Preschoolers were randomly assigned to a music program, a phonological skills program, and a control group that received sports training
The current results suggest that the music and the phonological skills programs resulted in medium to large effect sizes

Summary

Introduction

Language and music are specific to humans and share several characteristics such as the use of the auditory domain as the input path and the organization of discrete perceptual elements into structured sequences (Patel, 2003). McMullen and Saffran (2004) postulated that language and music share relevant processing mechanisms, especially in childhood. McMullen and Saffran (2004) postulated that language and music share relevant processing mechanisms, especially in childhood. One shared mechanism in childhood is the sound category learning mechanism (McMullen and Saffran, 2004). A relationship between language sound categories such as phonemes (phonological awareness) and musical sound categories such as notes should be evident. To test this relation, the present study applied an experimental design to investigate the effect of a music program on phonological awareness in preschoolers. If the “shared sound category learning mechanism hypothesis” (Patel, 2008) is correct, the effects of the two programs on phonological awareness should be comparable

Methods

Results

Conclusion