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.
Brazilian listeners (N = 303) were asked to identify emotions conveyed in 1-min instrumental excerpts from Wagner’s operas. Participants included musically untrained 7- to 10-year-olds and university students in music (musicians) or science (nonmusicians). After hearing each of eight different excerpts, listeners made a forced-choice judgment about which of eight emotions best matched the excerpt. The excerpts and emotions were chosen so that two were in each of four quadrants in two-dimensional space as defined by arousal and valence. Listeners of all ages performed at above-chance levels, which means that complex, unfamiliar musical materials from a different century and culture are nevertheless meaningful for young children. In fact, children performed similarly to adult nonmusicians. There was age-related improvement among children, however, and adult musicians performed best of all. As in previous research that used simpler musical excerpts, effects due to age and music training were due primarily to improvements in selecting the appropriate valence. That is, even 10-year-olds with no music training were as likely as adult musicians to match a high- or low-arousal excerpt with a high- or low-arousal emotion, respectively. Performance was independent of general cognitive ability as measured by academic achievement but correlated positively with basic pitch-perception skills.
Musical abilities, both in the pitch and temporal dimension, have been shown to be positively associated with phonological awareness and reading abilities in both children and adults. There is increasing evidence that the relationship between music and language relies primarily on the temporal dimension, including both meter and rhythm. It remains unclear to what extent skill level in these temporal aspects of music may uniquely contribute to the prediction of reading outcomes. A longitudinal design was used to test a group-administered musical sequence transcription task (MSTT). This task was designed to preferentially engage sequence processing skills while controlling for fine-grained pitch discrimination and rhythm in terms of temporal grouping. Forty-five children, native speakers of Portuguese ( Mage = 7.4 years), completed the MSTT and a cognitive-linguistic protocol that included visual and auditory working memory tasks, as well as phonological awareness and reading tasks in second grade. Participants then completed reading assessments in third and fifth grades. Longitudinal regression models showed that MSTT and phonological awareness had comparable power to predict reading. The MSTT showed an overall classification accuracy for identifying low-achievement readers in Grades 2, 3, and 5 that was analogous to a comprehensive model including core predictors of reading disability. In addition, MSTT was the variable with the highest loading and the most discriminatory indicator of a phonological factor. These findings carry implications for the role of temporal sequence processing in contributing to the relationship between music and language and the potential use of MSTT as a language-independent, time- and cost-effective tool for the early identification of children at risk of reading disability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.