Temporal and spectral auditory processing abilities are required for efficient and unimpaired processing of speech and might thus be associated with the development of phonological and literacy skills in children. Indeed, studies with unselected children have found links between these basic auditory processing abilities and the development of phonological awareness, reading, and spelling. Additionally, associations between the processing of temporal or spectral/tonal information in music and phonological awareness/literacy have been reported, but findings concerning relations between music processing and spelling are rather sparse. To gain more insights into the specific, potentially age-dependent relevance of various temporal (e.g., rhythm, tempo) and tonal (e.g., pitch, melody) musical subdomains for phonological awareness and literacy, we adapted five music-processing tasks (three temporal, two tonal) for use with tablet computers and used them in two cross-sectional studies with German children from two age groups: Study 1 was conducted with preschool children (about 5 years of age; without formal reading and spelling instruction) and focused on associations between music processing and phonological awareness. In Study 2, third-graders (about 8 years of age) were investigated concerning relations between music processing, phonological awareness, reading comprehension, and spelling. In both studies, rhythm reproduction and pitch perception turned out to be significant predictors of phonological awareness in stepwise regression analyses. Although various associations between music processing and literacy were found for third-graders in Study 2, after phonological awareness was accounted for, only rhythm reproduction made a unique contribution to literacy skills, namely, to alphabetic spelling skills. Hence, both studies indicate that temporal (i.e., rhythm reproduction) and spectral/tonal (i.e., pitch perception) musical skills are distinctly and uniquely related to phonological awareness in children from different age groups (preschool vs. Grade 3). The finding that rhythm reproduction, an auditory temporal processing skill integrating perceptual and motor aspects of rhythm processing, was especially tightly linked to phonological awareness and literacy corroborates other findings on associations between rhythm processing and literacy development and is of interest from the viewpoint of current theories of developmental dyslexia. The potential relevance of our results for applied research concerning early diagnosis and training of literacy-related skills is discussed.
In this chapter, we examine how music/teacher education is represented on the websites of four Norwegian institutions that offer diverse kinds of music/teacher education at the BA, MA, and PhD levels and that offer qualifications for all types of music teaching professions in Norway. These four cases serve as examples of the main traditions of music/teacher educations in the Nordic area, with distinctive differences in their notions of music, pedagogy, professional orientation, and research. The analysis is theoretically grounded in Foucault’s concepts of power/knowledge and governmentality. The findings suggest, on the one hand, considerable variations among the institutions and, on the other hand, similarities in how the representations operate in a range of steering techniques in the ways that these education programs, orientations, groups, and individuals are portrayed. The concluding discussion questions the power/knowledge constructions that provide authority to the dominating discourses, critically pointing to some effects that diverse representations might have for positions, ambitions, and individuals. Getting the diverse communities of music/teacher educations to communicate seems imperative to evolve more reflexive, conscious, and participative music/teacher education programs in the 21st century.
In this paper, we introduce the MARKO competency test and competency model, a new measurement instrument for music-related argumentative competence (MARKO: Musikbezogene ARgumentationsKOmpetenz; German for music-related argumentative competence). This competence, which plays an essential role in school curricula, refers to the ability to justify, and defend judgments about music. The two main goals of this study were 1) to design an assessment test for music-related argumentation that fulfills psychometric criteria and 2) to derive competency levels based on empirical data to describe the cognitive dispositions that are necessary when engaging in argumentation about music. Based on a theoretical framework, we developed a competency test to assess music-related argumentative competence. After two pretests (n = 391), we collected data from 440 students from grade nine to the university level. The final test consisted exclusively of open-ended items, which were rated with coding schemes that had been designed for each item. After ensuring inter-rater reliability, we composed an item pool that met psychometric criteria (e.g., local stochastic independence and item homogeneity) and represented content-related aspects in a meaningful way. Based on this item pool, we estimated a one-dimensional partial credit model. Following a standard-setting approach, four competency levels were derived from the empirical data. While individuals on the lowest competency level expressed their own opinions about the music by referring to salient musical attributes, participants on the highest level discussed different opinions on the music, and considered the social and cultural context of the music. The proficiency scores significantly varied between grades. Our findings empirically support some theoretical assumptions about music-related argumentation and challenge others.
On tests of verbal short-term memory, performance declines as a function of auditory distraction. The negative impact of to-beignored sound on serial recall is known as the irrelevant sound effect. It can occur with speech, sine tones, and music. Moreover, sound that changes acoustically from one token to the next (i.e., changing-state sound) is more disruptive to serial recall than repetitive, steady-state sound. We tested manipulations that resulted in changes in (higher levels of) perceptual organization for more complex tonal stimuli. Within a trial, the first two bars of a well-known melody were repeated (a) in the exact same manner, (b) with variations only in tempo, (c) with variations only in mode (e.g., Dorian or Phrygian), or (d) with variations in both tempo and mode. Participants serially recalled digits in each of the irrelevant sound conditions as well as in a silent control condition. In Experiment 1a, we tested non-music students and, to investigate whether musical expertise affected the findings, additionally tested students majoring in music in Experiment 1b. Across both samples, recall in the irrelevant sound conditions was significantly poorer than in the silent control condition, but only the tempo variation caused an additional harmful effect. The mode variation did not affect recall performance, in either music or non-music students. These findings indicate that, at least with music, changes are a matter of degree and not every additional variation impairs recall performance.
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