News Briefs
Music training good for reading, too
Apr 2, 2009 3:33 PM
Children exposed to a multi-year program of music involving training in increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal and practical skills show greater cognitive performance in reading than do their nonmusically trained peers, says a study published in the journal Psychology of Music.
The study’s authors, Long Island University scholars Joseph M. Piro and Camilo Ortiz, looked at 2nd-graders in two U.S. schools, one that routinely trained children in music and one that did not. Both schools followed comprehensive balanced literacy programs. Researchers tested the hypothesis that there were similarities in the way that individuals interpret music and language.
“Because neural response to music is a widely distributed system within the brain … it would not be unreasonable to expect that some processing networks for music and language behaviors, namely reading, located in both hemispheres of the brain would overlap,” they wrote.
The study looked at two reading subskills — vocabulary and verbal sequencing — which, according to the authors, “are cornerstone components in the continuum of literacy development and a window into the subsequent successful acquisition of proficient reading and language skills such as decoding and reading comprehension.”
Participants were individually tested to assess their reading skills at the start and close of the school year. Results showed that the music-learning group had markedly better vocabulary and verbal sequencing scores than did the non-music-learning control group.
This finding, conclude the authors, provides evidence to support the increasingly common practice of “educators incorporating a variety of approaches, including music, in their teaching practice in continuing efforts to improve reading achievement in children.”
Science Daily, March 16
