Associations between early shared music activities in the home and later child outcomes: Findings from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

Early childhood profiles of sleep problems and self‐regulation predict later school adjustment

“…It is likely that there are reciprocal relations between sleep problems and emotional and attentional self‐regulation across early childhood (Williams, Berthelsen, et al ., ). Early sleep problems that do not resolve may result in suboptimal neurological processing, inhibiting the development of self‐regulatory skills.…”

“…Emotional regulation and attentional regulation were each measured with four motherreported items using the short form of the Australian Temperament Scales (infant and child versions; Prior, Sanson, & Oberklaid, 1989), commonly used by researchers using the LSAC data set to represent self-regulation (Gialamas et al, 2014;Sawyer et al, 2014;Williams, Barrett, Welch, Abad, & Broughton, 2015). As shown in Table 2, items differed across waves to account for the developmental stages of the children.…”

Young children’s musical activities in the home

“…Of particular relevance to this study is Bronfenbrenner's attention to an individual's interaction with the world of symbols and language (semiotic systems) within microsystems which he believed to be significant in understanding the formulation of people's intentions, goals and actions towards each other (Lerner, 2005). This is because music is noted to be used in the home for relational and practical purposes by parents such as calming, soothing and motivating children, contributing to the routine and structure of children's daily habits, such as nap times and meal times and promoting parent-child interactions (Young, 2008;Lamont, 2008;Williams et. al, 2015) that serve to promote language.…”

“…In a longitudinal Australian study that used a large dataset (5,107 children) from the Infant Cohort of the Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) study (parent reports), Williams et al, (2015) aimed to identify the benefits of shared musical activities in the home and any associations between frequency of these activities and later outcomes for children in comparison shared reading activities. On analysing data from children's participation in activities at age two to three years and later outcomes at four to five years, findings suggest that the frequency of shared parent-child music activities (in common with shared reading activities) correlate positively with children's later prosocial skills, vocabulary, numeracy and attentional and emotional regulation.…”

Evaluating the impact of a generalist teacher-led music program on early childhood school children’s singing skills and attitudes to music

“…Part of this debate relates to the extent to which non-music specialist/generalist primary school teachers are able to support their students' musical development, particularly if the teachers 2 either lack sufficient music education knowledge and/or confidence to teach music (e.g., Hennessy, 2012). This pedagogical challenge should be seen within a context where considerable evidence from across the world is indicating that music instruction is associated with improved measures of intellectual functioning, spatial and verbal skills (Costa-Giomi, 2012), as well as literacy, numeracy, and aspects of executive function (Williams et al, 2015;Sachs, Kaplan, Der Sarkissian, & Habibi, 2017). For example, a study of 132 Canadian 6-year-olds documented greater improvement in general IQ in students undertaking one-year tuition in keyboard and voice than those in control groups (Schellenberg, 2004).…”