See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/323261962

The effects of training in rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness in

four- to six-year-old children

Article  in  Psychology of Music · February 2018

DOI: 10.1177/0305735618756763

CITATIONS READS

0 266

3 authors, including:

Franziska Degé Gudrun Schwarzer

Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
19 PUBLICATIONS   282 CITATIONS    120 PUBLICATIONS   1,206 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

The development of the interplay of verbal and facial information in emotion categorization View project

Categorization of emotional information in words and faces during child development View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Franziska Degé on 21 May 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

756763
research-article2018
POM0010.1177/0305735618756763Psychology of MusicPatscheke et al.

Article

Psychology of Music

The effects of training in

1­–16
© The Author(s) 2018
Reprints and permissions:
rhythm and pitch on sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0305735618756763
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735618756763
phonological awareness in journals.sagepub.com/home/pom

four- to six-year-old children

Hanne Patscheke, Franziska Degé

and Gudrun Schwarzer

Abstract
Music training is frequently used for enhancing phonological awareness. The disentanglement of the
influences of basic music essentials on phonological awareness could contribute to the measurement
of their effectiveness. Therefore, this study investigated the separate effects of training in rhythm and
pitch on phonological awareness. Preschoolers aged between four and six years (M = 5.5 years; SD =
0.7 years; 25 boys, 15 girls) were randomly assigned to a music training condition and a non-music
training condition. Children in the music condition either participated in a rhythm program or in
a pitch program, whereas children in the non-music control condition attended a sports program.
All groups were trained three times a week for 20 minutes per session over a period of 16 weeks.
Phonological awareness was tested before and after the training phase. At the pretest, no significant
differences were found between the three groups. After the training phase, only the pitch program
showed a positive effect on phonological awareness concerning rhyming, blending, and segmenting.
Thus, these findings can be used to rearrange music training programs to contain more pitch
elements in order to increase their effectiveness in enhancing phonological awareness.

Keywords
rhythm training, pitch training, children, phonological awareness, music

The benefits of music are wide-ranging (Miendlarzewska & Trost, 2014). Beyond music-related
abilities, music is increasingly being seen as useful for enhancing language-related abilities (e.g.,
vocabulary: Moreno, et al., 2011; reading: Moreno, et al., 2009). In particular, music training
promotes phonological awareness (Degé & Schwarzer, 2011; Gromko, 2005), which is an impor-
tant and reliable predictor of later reading and writing ability (e.g., Küspert & Schneider, 2003).

Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

Corresponding author:
Hanne Patscheke, Justus-Liebig University, Otto-Behaghel Street 10f, Giessen, 35394, Germany.
Email: hanne.patscheke@psychol.uni-giessen.de
2 Psychology of Music 00(0)

This ability describes the understanding, detection, and manipulation of a language at the level
of words and phonemes. Regarding the word level, phonological awareness comprises the rhym-
ing of words, blending, segmentation of chunks within words, and the isolation of individual
words from the speech flow. On the phonemic level, this ability refers to the smallest sound units
within words (phonemes), and describes the detection and manipulation of these individual
sound units. The development of phonological awareness starts as an implicit process until chil-
dren learn the alphabet. With the knowledge of letters, phonemes become audio-visual and
explicit processes, thus phonological awareness increases automatically (Marx, 2007; Ziegler &
Goswami, 2005). The acquisition and advancement of phonological awareness is an important
basis for reading and writing processes, especially for preschoolers before starting primary school
(Marx, 2007). For this reason, the enhancement of phonological awareness has become an
important issue. Next to well-established language programs that target phonological aware-
ness (e.g., Küspert & Schneider, 2003; Plume & Schneider, 2004), the potential influence of
music training on phonological awareness has also been investigated.

Music and phonological awareness

Music and language both consist of auditory stimuli, are generically structured, and deliver
messages (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983). In addition, music and language show a clear overlap
in their cortical and subcortical neural substrates (Koelsch & Siebel, 2005; Schön et al., 2010)
suggesting shared neural resources (Patel, 2011, 2014; White-Schwoch, Carr, Anderson,
Strait, & Kraus, 2013). Due to these similarities, researchers have started investigating the
association between music and language with respect to the effects of music training on pho-
nological awareness skills (Bolduc, 2009; Chobert, François, Velay & Besson, 2014; François,
Chobert, Besson, & Schön, 2013; Gromko, 2005; Moritz, Yampolsky, Papadelis, Thomson, &
Wolf, 2013). Studies showed that daily training resulted in improvements in a wide range of
phonological skills (Moritz, et al., 2013), that music training specifically designed to train pho-
nological awareness is more effective than regular music training (Bolduc, 2009), and that
phonological skills were enhanced in children attending kindergarteners who received music
training compared to an untrained control group (Gromko, 2005).
Although these studies point to a causal relationship between music training and phono-
logical awareness, it is not possible to interpret the results with complete certainty because of a
lack of control groups (Bolduc, 2009; Moritz et al., 2013), or the use of pseudo-random assign-
ment (Gromko, 2005). Degé and Schwarzer (2011) tested the effect of a music program on
phonological awareness by randomly assigning five- to six-year-old preschoolers to a music
program, a phonological skills program, or a sports control group. The music program was
based on a well-established program for early music education (Nykrin, Grüner, & Widmer,
2007), and contained joint singing and drumming, as well as rhythmic exercises with percus-
sion instruments. The phonological skills program was a well-established program specifically
designed to train phonological awareness (Küspert & Schneider, 2003). The sports program
was based on Yoga and Active Games for Kids from Dunemann-Gulde (2005). Preschoolers were
trained in small groups for ten minutes every day for a period of 20 weeks. Phonological aware-
ness was assessed before and after the training phase. The results indicated that the music pro-
gram had a positive effect on phonological awareness in preschoolers. Specifically, phonological
awareness on the word level improved significantly, whereas phonological awareness on the
phonemic level did not show such an improvement. More recently, Patscheke, Degé, and
Schwarzer (2016) replicated the study from Degé and Schwarzer (2011) with 4 to 6 year old
children of immigrant families. The results of this study supported the results of Degé and
Patscheke et al. 3

Schwarzer (2011), and extended their findings to this special target group. A current meta-
analysis from Gordon, Fehd, and McCandliss (2015) dealt with the issue of whether music
training enhance literacy skills, including phonological awareness. They included 13 studies
(out of 901) that met the criteria of including control groups, pre-post measures, and reading
instruction being held constant across groups. Their results confirmed that music training pro-
motes phonological skills.

The contribution of musical essentials to the enhancement of phonological

awareness
This highly interesting result raises a further issue: the effectiveness of particular basic music
essentials in enhancing phonological awareness. A more detailed view on the impact of these
basic music essentials on phonological awareness could make it possible to rearrange existing
music training programs for increased effectiveness in enhancing phonological awareness.
However, music is multi-dimensional and usually involves several elements like rhythm, mel-
ody, meter, and tonality. Therefore, an isolated examination of particular musical elements and
their impact on phonological awareness may prove to be difficult and would lead away from
naturalistic music. However, focusing on rhythm and pitch would allow for a rough division of
basic music essentials because both produce sounds and can easily be extracted from a musical
composition.
Musical rhythm includes metric regularity, accents, rhythmic patterning, and grouping of
sound events (Tighe & Dowling, 1993). Metrical structure refers to the periodic events of strong
and weak beats of a piece, whereas grouping expresses a hierarchical segmentation of a piece
with recursive groups, and each group must be composed of contiguous elements (Lerdahl &
Jackendoff, 1983). Rhythm perception is relatively stable in 4- to 12-year-old children regard-
ing the ability to detect changes in rhythmic patterns (Drake, Jones, & Baruch, 2000). However,
there is a shift from figural perception of rhythm to metric perception between 6 and 12 years
of age (Bamberger, 2013; Smith, Cuddy, & Upitis, 1994), and children improve their ability to
perceive metric regularity within rhythmic patterns. Children aged 4 can synchronize with a
given beat as well as reproduce a simple beat, and there are no developmental differences
between 5- and 12-year-olds (Drake et al., 2000; Drake & Gérard, 1989).
Pitch is the most common dimension for creating an organized system of musical events
(Patel, 2008). The succession of pitches must contain coherence in order to be defined as a
melody (Randel, 1978). In this regard, pitches express harmonic and melodic tension and
relaxation, as well as continuity and progression in a piece (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983). While,
melody perception develops during infancy (Corrigall & Schellenberg, 2016; Trehub, Thorpe &
Morrongiello, 1987), children learn to reproduce simple songs later, typically between three
and seven years of age. In this age range, young children learn to combine songs and song frag-
ments, and their pitch broadens up to one octave (Davidson, 1994). On this basis, complex
musical abilities (e.g., the integration of changes in pitch and rhythm at the same time) develop
during kindergarten and primary school (McPherson, 2016; Paananen, 2007), and no explicit
musical education is necessary for this development.

Rhythm
The theoretical framework from Tierney and Kraus (2014) points toward acoustic rhyth-
mic features that might play a key role in music and language transfer effects. Tierney and
Kraus (2014) postulate the “precise auditory timing hypothesis” (PATH). They assume that
4 Psychology of Music 00(0)

music and language rely on extremely subtle timing details in sounds. They point out that
the ability to entrain (i.e., precisely timed joint action) is the core mechanism of both. Music
training requires entrainment, which in turn calls for precise perception of acoustic event
timing. Thus, music training might promote timing precision that improves speech sound
perception, which is important for phonological skills. Growing evidence converges on the
idea that rhythm has a temporal organizational role in perceiving music and language, and
is crucial for the development of literacy skills (Tierney & Kraus, 2013; Woodruff Carr,
White-Schwock, Tierney, Strait & Kraus, 2014). In music, rhythm provides a temporal
organizational structure that allows the perception of musical events as regular patterns.
In language, rhythm organizes syllables, words, and clausal boundaries. Correlational
studies between metrical skills and phonological skills suggest that an accurate perception
of metrical structure may be critical for phonological development (Anvari, Trainor,
Woodside & Levy, 2002; David, Wade-Woolley, Kirby, & Smithrim, 2007; Holliman, Wood,
& Sheehy, 2010).
A similar approach is used in the “temporal sampling theory” of Goswami (2011).
Originally, Goswami’s (2011) framework was created for children with developmental dys-
lexia. But she also noted that this theory had implications for both language development
and for the perception of music. Here, the decoding of music and language is linked to the
perception of accent and beat. The ability to hear the onset of these accents is critical for
decoding the structure in speech and rhythm. In particular, rise times are crucial events in
the speech signal and work as a cue to the perception of syllable stress in language, and also
to rhythmic timing in music. Similarly, Moritz and colleagues (2013) as well as Verney (2009)
argue that rhythm ability involves perception and manipulation of time intervals between
musical sounds and between speech sounds, particularly between phonemes. Thus, rhythm
exercises may foster the comprehension of rhymes, the segmentation of words, and the
manipulation of phonemes. Moritz and colleagues (2013) argue that if rhythm sensitivity is
crucial for the development of phonological skills, difficulties in rhythm sensitivity should be
associated with poor phonological abilities. In fact, studies show that reading-disabled chil-
dren have problems with rhythmic sensitivity (e.g., the detection or reproduction of rhythmic
patterns) compared to normally developing readers (Wolff, 2002; Witton, et  al., 1998).
Several studies have shown that children with dyslexia perform poorly in segmentation and
grouping, both in music and speech (Overy, Nicolson, Fawcett, & Clarke, 2003; Petkov,
O’Connor, Benmoshe, Baynes, & Sutter, 2005; Thomson & Goswami, 2008). Huss and col-
leagues (2010) found that individual differences in auditory perception from both typically
developing children and children with developmental dyslexia (all aged between 8 and 13
years) were linked to musical metrical sensitivity. This, in turn, predicted phonological aware-
ness and accounted for 28% of unique variance, after controlling for IQ. Flaugnacco and
colleagues (2014) even suggest that music training focused on rhythm could be beneficial for
children with dyslexia, or for children considered to be at risk based on phonological aware-
ness. Furthermore, Verney (2009) found that training in rhythmic activities led to increased
phonological awareness, especially rhymes and syllable awareness. However, he also found
that music listening and production gave the same effect. One experimental group was given
a program of music games and songs. The second experimental group was given a matched
program of games and “rhythmic speech” without singing or musical accompaniment. The
third group acted as a control and received no training. His intervention study ran for seven
weeks and included four and five-year-old children. The results suggest that beyond rhythm,
pitch (in terms of singing) is also important for facilitating phonological skills. Thus, pitch
could also work as a basic music essential in enhancing phonological awareness.
Patscheke et al. 5

Pitch
The “shared sound category learning mechanism hypothesis” (SSCLMH) of Patel (2008)
argues for pitch in terms of singing as a potential underlying mechanism of music and lan-
guage. Patel (2008) claims that the categorical building blocks of music, e.g., notes (which
correspond to pitches), are related to the categorical building blocks of language, e.g., pho-
nemes. The influence of music training on language, especially on phonological awareness,
can therefore be attributed to the sharpening of an underlying domain-general sound-learning
mechanism. Herrera, Lorenzo, Defior, Fernandez-Smitz and Costa-Giomi (2011) tested 97 four-
year-old preschoolers receiving phonological training with or without music (experimental
groups), or receiving no specialized training (control group) in a two-year pretest/post-test
study. They found that phonological training both with and without music was effective in
improving phonological awareness skills and naming speed compared to the control group.
Furthermore, the phonological training with music was based on children’s rhymes and songs,
and was particularly effective for the development of phonological awareness of ending sounds,
namely rhyming, compared to phonological training without singing. Trehub and Trainor
(1998) argue that music for children is like infant-directed speech because it is simple, and
consists of repeated pitch contours. Happy vocalizations play an important role in regulating
infant attention (Corbeil, Trehub, & Peretz, 2013). Singing makes children aware of the indi-
vidual sounds in speech because songs consist of lyrics, words, and syllables that are length-
ened, repeated, and stressed (Fisher & McDonald, 2001). Thus, songs provide a unique and
valuable form of access to phonemes, the smallest sound-unit of language. Indeed, a study by
Bryant, Bradley, Maclean, and Crossland (1989) confirms this argument. This longitudinal
study tested three-year-old children by comparing their phonological sensitivity to their knowl-
edge of nursery rhymes. They found a strong relation between children’s early knowledge of
nursery rhymes and their phonological sensitivity over the next three years. Clément and col-
leagues (2015) found that children aged between 8 and 12 years with Specific Language
Impairment show impairments in singing abilities compared to same aged children with Typical
Language Development (Clément, Planchou, Béland, Motte, & Samson, 2015).
In addition to Patel’s hypothesis (SSCLMH: Patel, 2008), McMullen and Saffran (2004) have
also put forward a domain-general learning mechanism for language and music. Based on data
relating to the ontogeny of language and music in human infants, they concluded that both
domains rely on the same learning mechanisms, namely, the extraction of an abstract set of
rules through statistical learning, in order to form “native” sound categories (e.g., Saffran,
2003). In music, the succession of pitches is related to all tonal aspects like harmonic and
melodic tension and relaxation. Here, the decline in pitch as well as a lengthening of the final
note often mark the end of verse and chorus components in songs (Rautenberg, 2015). In lan-
guage, pitch is more related to intonation, and the ends of clauses are marked by syllable
lengthening and a drop in pitch (Rautenberg, 2015).

Objectives
On the one hand, rhythm exercises could foster the comprehension of rhymes or the segmen-
tation of words thanks to precise perception of acoustic rhythmic features. On the other
hand, pitches could promote general auditory sensitivity, and thus phonological discrimina-
tion, because of an underlying domain-general sound-learning mechanism. Therefore,
research is needed to disentangle the effects of rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness
in children. A rhythm-focused training program should avoid everything related to pitch
6 Psychology of Music 00(0)

perception and reproduction, as well as melodies. At the same time, a pitch-focused training
program should allow for overlaps with rhythm only when absolutely necessary (e.g., in strict
time joint singing). To the best of our knowledge, no study has thus far addressed this prob-
lem. Thus, our study was aimed at investigating the effects of training in rhythm and pitch on
phonological awareness in preschoolers. The training programs were appropriate for the
stage of music development of 4 to 6 year-old children. We expected positive effects especially
for phonological awareness on the word level, because previous findings from Degé and
Schwarzer (2011) showed that music had an impact on phonological awareness of large
phonological units. Children were randomly assigned to experimental groups that either par-
ticipated in a rhythm program or in a pitch program, or to a control group that attended a
sports program. The effects of the rhythm program and the pitch program were compared
with the sports program to control for the effects of retesting, maturation, and extra atten-
tion (e.g., Hawthorne effect). Randomized group assignment was used to control for system-
atic differences between the groups. Phonological awareness was tested prior to the beginning
of the training and after the training phase was completed. Thus, it was possible to establish
a specific causal relationship between training in rhythm or pitch, and phonological aware-
ness in the experimental groups.

Method
Participants
Participants were recruited from kindergartens in Germany. The sample comprised 40 pre-
schoolers (25 boys, 15 girls), with an age range from 4.2 years to 6.3 years (M = 5.5 years; SD
= 0.7 years). For detailed information about the sample and the dropout, see Supplementary
materials online.
Information about music experience, education, and monthly income were reported by the
parents (measures are described below). Regarding music experience, 60% of the children had
no music experience, 25% had some music experience (early music education, private music
lessons), and the parents of the last 15% did not reply to this question. Regarding parental
music education, for 73% of children neither parent had music experience (e.g., playing an
instrument), for 10% one parent had music experience, for 5% both parents had music experi-
ence, and the remaining 11% of parents did not provide details about their music experience.
The educational background information revealed that for 55% of the children neither parent
had a university degree, 10% had one parent with a university degree, 20% had both parents
with a university degree, and the remaining 15% of parents did not reply to this question. The
monthly income range of the families was between “below 1,000 Euros” and “more than 3,000
Euros”, with 15% having an income below 1,000 Euros, 28% families having an income
between 1,000 Euros and 2,000 Euros, 10% between 2,000 Euros and 3,000 Euros, 20% of
the families having an income of more than 3,000 Euros, and 26% did not provide details about
their monthly income.

Material
Training programs. Trained research assistants implemented all three programs (pitch,
rhythm, sports). Research assistants met weekly to go over the manual-based programs cre-
ated by the authors, in terms of detailed schedules of training tasks in order to ensure treat-
ment fidelity. This process was supervised, with a lot of attention paid to compliance
Patscheke et al. 7

regarding correct order and execution of tasks, as well as continuous assessment of the
training sessions for all three groups. A typical training session for the children comprised a
short welcome (small talk, attendance check), and three to four different tasks of approxi-
mately 15 minutes in duration.
The manual for the rhythm program focused on rhythmic exercises, meter execution, per-
ception and imitation of rhythmic sounds taken from the music program used by Degé and
Schwarzer (2011), and contained no singing or musical accompaniment. The rhythmic exer-
cises consisted of joint drumming activities with different percussion instruments. Meter
execution included synchronization of particular body movements to a given beat, to feel the
rhythm and the meter with the whole body, and dancing to certain rhythms while playing a
percussion instrument. The perception and imitation tasks contained spoken nursery rhymes
that were accompanied with rhythmic sounds (e.g., tabors, claves, clapping hands), and a
combination of complex rhythmic sequences combined with spoken syllables (e.g., ta-ta-ta,
ta-ta-tatate).
The manual for the pitch program was arranged by focusing on singing parts, intonation
tasks, pitch perception, and listening exercises taken from the music program used by Degé and
Schwarzer (2011). Singing parts contained mainly joint singing of songs and rhymes for chil-
dren. Intonation tasks comprised reproduction of tone sequences and intervals. Pitch percep-
tion included discrimination and reproduction of high and low tones, discrimination of
different pitch intervals, pitch sequences, and identifying whether a tone is played alone or
together with one or two other tones. Listening exercises were presented using a CD player and
included identifying animal calls, listening to an orchestra, and detecting which instruments
are playing.
Though both programs focused on particular basic music essentials, naturally there was
some overlap. On the one hand, the rhythm program contained intonation in terms of prosody
because rhyming syllables as well as the reproduction of rhythmic sounds are connected with
prosodic features (McMullen & Saffran, 2004). On the other hand, the pitch program consisted
of rhythmic elements, because there is no melody without rhythm, and melodic contour is
based on metrical and grouping structures (Tighe & Dowling, 1993). Nevertheless, overlap was
reduced to the essential minimum to maintain the natural qualities of music.
The manual for the sports program was compiled by Degé and Schwarzer (2011) and con-
tained exercises to support motor skills and body coordination by training balance, physical
strength, endurance, body perception, and relaxation. It was based on Yoga and active games for
kids by Dunemann-Gulde (2005). See Supplementary materials online for more detailed descrip-
tions of each of the three programs.

Measures
Phonological awareness was assessed as a dependent variable with the Test für phonologische
Bewusstheitsfähigkeiten (TPB; Fricke & Schäfer, 2011). The test consists of an active vocabulary
task and seven (out of eleven) subtests: (1) segmentation of words into syllables, (2) detection
of rhymes, (3) production of rhymes, (4 and 5) synthesis of onset phonemes and words, and
(6 and 7) onset phoneme recognition in words. Each subtest consisted of three practice items
and twelve test items. The test procedure takes approximately 40 minutes and is assessed
individually.
A total composite score of all subtest scores was calculated. In 6 out of 7 subtests a maxi-
mum of 12 points was possible, resulting in a maximum composite score of 72 points for
those subtests. In subtest 3 every correct rhyme word counts as a point, with no upper limit.
8 Psychology of Music 00(0)

In addition, the following two composite scores were calculated: a phonological awareness
score for large phonological units (words), consisting of scores from subtests 1, 2, and 3, as
well as a phonological awareness score for small phonological units (phonemes), consisting
of the scores from subtest 4 through 7. Therefore, the maximum score for large phonological
units consisted of 24 points plus the points from subtest 3, and for small phonological units,
48 points.
The control variables included gender, age, parental education, family income, and the
musical experience of the children and parents (assessed with a questionnaire). Parental
monthly income and education were coded as categorical variables. The children’s music expe-
rience was measured in months of participation in music programs or training. Parents’ music
experience was coded as 0 representing “no music experience”, 1 for “one parent has music
experience” (e.g., playing an instrument, vocal training, etc.), and 2 for “both parents have
music experience”.
Intelligence was measured with the Culture Fair Test (CFT 1: Weiss & Osterland, 1997),
which measures fluid intelligence. The test consisted of five subtests (substitution, mazes, clas-
sification, similarities, and matrices), and was administered in groups that did not exceed eight
children in accordance with the manual.
Children’s enjoyment during the training was assessed in order to control for potential biases
regarding their commitment and willingness. The measure was a 5-point smiley scale that was
used at the end of every week during the training phase. Children were asked how much they
enjoyed the training and had to point at one smiley. The smiley scale ranged from 1 = not a bit,
to 5 = very much. The smiley in the middle expressed no feelings. For statistical purposes, the
smiley points were summed up and divided by the number of training weeks to generate an
average score for every child.

Procedure
Information sheets about the study, informed consent forms, and the questionnaire to col-
lect information on gender, age, education, income, and music experiences were handed out
to the parents of the children. Next, the pretests containing an intelligence test and a pho-
nological awareness test were performed either on consecutive days, or on the same day
with adequate breaks in between. After the pretests, children were randomly assigned to a
pitch program, a rhythm program, or a sports program. All groups contained four to seven
children who were trained at their kindergartens in a separate and undisturbed room. Each
training session lasted for 20 minutes. Training took place 3 times a week, for a period of 16
weeks. Immediately after the training phase, a post-test was conducted for the assessment of
phonological awareness.

Results
SPSS Version 21 was used for statistical analyses.

Control variables
In addition to randomization, all groups were compared in terms of the control variables (see
Tables 1 and Table 2). The ratio of males to females seemed unequally distributed in the sports
group compared to the other groups. However, regarding the inferential statistics, the gender
ratio was not significantly different between the three groups (see Table 2).
Patscheke et al. 9

Table 1.  Means and standard deviations for the control variables, including number of males and females
in each training group.

Variables Programs

  Pitch M (SD) Rhythm M (SD) Sports M (SD)

Gender 7f / 6m 5f / 8m 3f / 11m
Age* 63.54 (8.13) 67.62 (6.41) 67.21 (4.41)
IQ 94.15 (19.54) 87.46 (14.47) 100.43 (11.66)
Enjoyment of training 3.86 (0.7) 4.33 (0.66) 4.32 (0.62)
Children’s music experience* 6.75 (12.41) 1.09 (3.62) 14.91 (22.04)

*in months.

Table 2.  Inferential statistics for group comparisons (pitch, rhythm, sports) in terms of control variables.

Variable df Statistical value p

Age 2, 37 F = 1.592 .217
IQ 2, 37 F = 2.367 .108
Enjoyment of training 2, 37 F = 1.939 .158
Children’s Music experience 2, 31 F = 2.463 .102
Parents’ Music experience 2, n = 35 χ2 =1.186 .553
Parental education 2, n = 34 χ2 = 2.652 .266
Family income 2, n = 29 χ2 = 4.548 .603
Gender 2, n = 40 χ2 = 3.030 .220

Phonological awareness
Phonological awareness scores were tested with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, indicating that
all variables were normally distributed (p > .132).
At the pretest, the three groups did not differ significantly in phonological awareness, F(2, 37)
= 1.298, p = .285. Furthermore, the composite score for large phonological units did not reveal
group differences, F(2, 37) = 0.801, p = .457, and neither did the composite score for small pho-
nological units, F(2, 37) = 1.777, p = .183. See Table 3 for means and standard deviations.
Analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures was used to assess treatment effects
in the groups for the total score for phonological awareness, as well as for the composite scores
for large and small phonological units. Separate ANOVAs with repeated measures carried out
individually for each of the two experimental groups to provide a comparison with the control
group identified significant interactions. Furthermore, t-tests were used to specifically identify
the differences between the groups. This approach was considered reasonable for analyzing the
process of intervention.
For the total score for phonological awareness, no differences were found in the effect mag-
nitude between the groups (see Table 4).
Using the composite score for large phonological units, the ANOVA showed a trend towards
a group by time interaction (see Table 4). Although this interaction did not reach significance,
the large mean differences between the groups in the post-test (see Table 3) were of great inter-
est to us, and we analyzed the interaction in greater detail with additional repeated measures
ANOVAs to compare the groups in pairs, as follows.1
10 Psychology of Music 00(0)

Table 3.  Means and standard deviations for the phonological awareness scores at pretest and post-test.

Phonological Programs
awareness
Pitch M (SD) Rhythm M (SD) Sports M (SD)
Pretest
Total score 48.15 (22.16) 36.38 (18.30) 39.50 (17.35)
Large units 25.46 (13.48) 19.38 (11.7) 22.50 (11.51)
Small units 22.69 (11.32) 17.0 (8.12) 17.0 (6.96)
Post-test
Total score 65.31 (29.1) 49.85 (19.82) 47.14 (22.32)
Large units 36.31 (18.25) 27.0 (12.6) 24.71 (11.4)
Small units 29.0 (12.49) 22.85 (9.44) 22.43 (11.53)

Table 4.  Phonological awareness scores analyzed with 3 (group: pitch, rhythm, sports) by 2 (time: pretest
vs. post-test) ANOVAs with repeated measures on the last factor.

Phonological Effects df F η² p
awareness
Total score Time (T) 1, 37 33.556* .476 .001
  Group (G) 2, 37 1.875 .092 .168
  TxG 2, 37 1.609 .080 .214
Large units T 1, 37 20.020* .351 .001
  G 2, 37 1.599 .080 .216
  TxG 2, 37 2.721 .128 .079
Small units T 1, 37 23.271* .386 .001
  G 2, 37 1.807 .002 .178
  TxG 2, 37 0.044 .089 .957

*p < .01

For the comparison between the pitch group and the sports control group, a repeated
measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for time, F(1, 25) = 10.814, p = .003, η²
= .302, with phonological awareness of large units improving over the course of both pro-
grams. No significant main effect was found for group, F(1, 25) = 2.162, p = .154, η² =
.080. Furthermore, this analysis showed a significant group by time interaction, F(1, 25) =
4.724, p = .039, η² = .159, dcorr = 0.58. Subsequent independent t-tests were carried out
to clarify this interaction, and they showed that while the pitch group and the sports control
group did not differ significantly in the pretest, t(25) = 0.615, p = .544, a clear difference
was revealed in the post-test, t(25) = 1.996, p = .057. When comparing the pretest and post-
test measures of the composite score for large phonological units within each group with a
dependent t-test, the pitch group showed a significant increase in phonological awareness
on the word level, t(12) = -3.374, p = .006, whereas the sports group did not improve, t(13)
= -0.923, p = .373.
In the comparison between the rhythm group and the sports control group, a repeated
measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for time, F(1, 25) = 8.590, p = .007, η² =
.256, with phonological awareness of large units improving over the course of both programs.
No significant main effect for group was revealed, F(1, 25) = 0.010, p = .923, η² < .001.
Patscheke et al. 11

Additionally, this analysis showed no significant group by time interaction, F(1, 25) = 2.594,
p = .120, η² = .094, dcorr = 0.14.
In the comparison between the two experimental groups, a repeated measures ANOVA
showed a significant main effect for time, F(1, 24) = 21.607, p < .001, η² = .474, with pho-
nological awareness of large units improving over the course of both programs. No signifi-
cant main effect for group was revealed, F(1, 24) = 2.173, p = .153, η² = .083. Furthermore,
the analysis showed no significant group by time interaction, F(1, 24) = 0.662, p = .424,
η² = .027.
Taken together, after the period of training, the pitch group showed a significant increase in
phonological awareness of large phonological units compared to the sports control group.
None of the other group comparisons revealed significant differences. Moreover, the pitch
group showed a significant improvement in phonological awareness of large phonological
units between the pre- and post-test.
The analysis revealed no differential effects between the groups on the composite score for
small phonological units (see Table 4).

Discussion
The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of programs focused on rhythm and pitch on
phonological awareness in preschoolers. These effects were compared with a sports program
from which no effect on phonological awareness was expected.
At the pretest, no significant differences were found between the three groups (rhythm pro-
gram, pitch program, and sports program) regarding control variables and phonological aware-
ness. Therefore, the groups were comparable.
After the training phase, the pitch program had a positive effect (dcorr = 0.58) on phonologi-
cal awareness of large phonological units, and the pitch group improved significantly from pre-
to post-test in contrast to the sports control group. Although the rhythm group also showed an
increase in phonological awareness, this difference did not reach significance when compared
to the sports control group, and the effect size (dcorr = 0.14) was small. All three groups
reflected a similar development in phonological awareness of small phonological units. As
hypothesized, a positive effect was revealed for phonological awareness on the word level. Based
on this result, a specific causal relationship between pitch training and phonological awareness
seems plausible.
This result is in line with Patel’s hypothesis (SSCLMH: 2008), namely, that the categorical
building blocks of music (musical notes) are related to the categorical building blocks of lan-
guage (phonemes). The notes correspond well to the pitch training in our study that focused on
pitch perception and reproduction, while the phonemes correspond to the phonological aware-
ness that we measured before and after the training. Also, our results agree with those of
Herrera et al. (2011), who showed improved rhyming as a result of phonological training based
on songs in particular. Indeed, our pitch program contained joint singing of songs and rhymes
for children. These songs were based on repeated pitch contours, catchy rhymes and melodies
that are lengthened, repeated and stressed. These sounds are similar to infant-directed speech
which makes children aware of sounds in speech and facilitates their phonological awareness
on the word level (see also Bryant et al., 1989; Corbeil et al., 2013; Fisher & McDonald, 2001;
Thiessen, Hill, & Saffran, 2005; Trehub & Trainor, 1998). Furthermore, our results also agree
with the conclusions of McMullen and Saffran (2004), who argued that music and language
rely on the same statistical learning mechanisms, namely the extraction of an abstract set of
rules, in order to form “native” sound categories. The pitch training promoted general auditory
12 Psychology of Music 00(0)

sensitivity in order to extract structures and units in speech. This is demonstrated for phono-
logical awareness on the word level, particularly rhyming and segmentation of words.
However, our results show that children’s phonological awareness on the phonemic level did
not improve, despite the theoretical framework of Patel (2008) clearly indicating that the cat-
egorical building block of language refers to phonological awareness of small and large units.
Likewise, Fisher and McDonald (2001), as well as Thiessen et al. (2005), say that trained acous-
tic sensitivity should strengthen children’s awareness of speech sounds on both levels. A pos-
sible reason could be that the training period of 16 weeks was too short to sufficiently impact
the precise auditory sensitivity that is crucial for the extraction and manipulation of phonemes.
Indeed, Herrera and colleagues’ (2011) training study lasted for two years, and the phonologi-
cal training group with music improved in phonological awareness on the word as well as on
the phonemic level. Similarly, Moritz and colleagues’ (2013) study lasted for one year, and the
experimental group improved in phonemic skills. Bolduc (2009) used a training period of only
15 weeks with daily 60-minute sessions. However, as mentioned earlier, neither Bolduc (2009)
nor Moritz et al. (2013) had a control group, which makes it difficult to interpret the results
with great confidence. Gromko (2005) used a training period of four months and also found
improvements on the phonemic level, but this study used a pseudo-random assignment that
makes it difficult to interpret the results.
Interestingly, our results do not reflect the theoretical frameworks of Tierney and Kraus
(2014) or Goswami (2011), which point to rhythmic abilities being core mechanisms for music
and language. Indeed, studies with dyslexic children have shown that there is a link between
auditory perception skills and rhythm skills (Flaugnacco et al., 2014; Huss et al., 2010). The
authors of the above studies argue that accurate perception of rhythmical structure is critical
for phonological development, and musical rhythm training could be beneficial for dyslexic
children. However, this argument does not necessarily mean that normally developing children
would benefit from musical rhythm training as much as dyslexic children. In another study by
Verney (2009),normally developing children were trained with either a rhythmic speech pro-
gram, or a program of music games and songs for seven weeks. The results showed that both
programs increased phonological skills, especially in rhymes and syllable awareness. However,
there was no indication that one program was more effective that the other. Unfortunately, he
compared the experimental groups with a control group receiving no training. Thus, the influ-
ence of attention effects such as the Hawthorne effect on the experimental groups cannot be
ruled out. By contrast, our study focused exclusively on rhythm and pitch to disentangle the
influences of these basic music essentials on phonological awareness. Additionally, both of the
experimental groups as well as the control group received the same amount of training time in
order to rule out attention effects.

Limitations and future direction

In order to determine the most effective proportions of rhythm and pitch in music training to
promote phonological awareness, separation between these basic music essentials is necessary,
but difficult to achieve. As mentioned earlier, overlaps between these elements exist naturally
because the rhythm program as well as the pitch program are both linked to rhythmic group-
ing, metrical structures, and prosody in terms of tonality and accents. Thus, the positive effect
of the pitch training on phonological awareness cannot be explained solely by pitch.
Unfortunately, this study had no follow-up measure, which would allow analysis of the sus-
tainability of the effects. However, participating children in this study were between four and
six years old and a follow-up measure, perhaps one year later, would mean that at least some of
Patscheke et al. 13

these children would have started at school, and schooling causes a significant increase in pho-
nological awareness (Marx, 2007). Thus, the complete equivalence of these groups in this
regard could not be guaranteed anymore unless the school children were eliminated, which
would in turn diminish the sample size.
The sample size was relatively small because close contact with the kindergartens for over six
months with high frequency training every week turned the experiment into a very cost-, time-,
and effort-intensive project. Future studies should consider these factors to establish causation
with a larger sample size. However, despite the small sample size in this study, we found a signifi-
cant effect of pitch training on phonological awareness, with a medium effect size (dcorr =
0.58) confirming its effectiveness (Cohen, 1988). Although, the combination of pitch and
rhythm yields the highest effect size (dcorr = 0.9; Degé & Schwarzer, 2011), the focus of this
study was to disentangle the influence of rhythm and pitch as basic music essentials, in order
to identify their individual effectiveness on phonological awareness. From the current results it
would seem that the positive effect on phonological awareness is driven by pitch for the most
part. Therefore, based on these findings, a greater emphasis on pitch in music training pro-
grams could lead to increased effectiveness of these programs in enhancing phonological
awareness.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: This research was supported by a graduate scholarship from the Justus-Liebig-
University, Giessen. The authors would like to thank the children and parents who participated in this
study as well as the kindergartens for their support.

Note
1. Furthermore, statistical significance is dependent on sample size because the number of participants
determines the standard error of a test statistic (Rost, 2005). The greater the sample size, the smaller
the standard error, the greater the significance of a statistical difference, which in turn means that
even small effects that might be irrelevant for application appear statistically significant in large sam-
ples (Rost, 2005). Therefore, Rost (2005) postulates reporting the practical significance, namely, the
effect size, next to the statistical significance in order to confirm the effectiveness of the intervention.

References
Anvari, S. H., Trainor, L. J., Woodside, J., & Levy, B. A. (2002). Relations among musical skills, pho-
nological processing, and early reading ability in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 83, 111–130. doi: 10.1016/S0022–0965(02)00124–8
Bamberger, J. (2013). Discovering the musical mind: A view of creativity as learning. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Bolduc, J. (2009). Effects of a music programme on kindergartners’ phonological awareness skills.
International Journal of Music Education, 27, 37–47. doi: 10.1177/0255761408099063
Bryant, P. E., Bradley, L., Maclean, M., & Crossland, J. (1989). Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and
reading. Journal of Child Language, 16, 407–428.
Chobert, J., François, C., Velay, J. L., & Besson, M. (2014). Twelve months of active musical training in
8- to 10-year-old children enhances the preattentive processing of syllabic duration and voice onset
time. Cerebral Cortex, 24, 956–967. doi: 10.1007/s00426–013–0514–8
Clément, S., Planchou, C., Béland, R., Motte, J., & Samson, S. (2015). Singing abilities in children
with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 420. doi: 10.3389/
fpsyg.2015.00420
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
14 Psychology of Music 00(0)

Corbeil, M., Trehub, S. E., & Peretz, I. (2013). Speech vs. singing: Infants choose happier sounds. Frontiers
in Psychology, 4. Article 372. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00372
Corrigall, K. A., & Schellenberg, G. E. (2016). Music cognition in childhood. In G. E. McPherson (Ed.),
The child as musician: A handbook of musical development (pp. 81–101). Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198744443.003.0005
David, D., Wade-Woolley, L., Kirby, J. R., & Smithrim, K. (2007). Rhythm and reading development
in school-age children: A longitudinal study. Journal of Research in Reading, 30, 169–183. doi:
10.1111/j.1467–9817.2006.00323.x
Davidson, L. (1994). Songsinging by young and old: A developmental approach to music. In R. Aiello & J.
A. Sloboda (Eds.), Musical perceptions (pp. 99–130). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Degé, F., & Schwarzer, G. (2011). The effect of a music program on phonological awareness in preschool-
ers. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, Article 124. doi: 10.1525/mp.2011.29.2.195
Dunemann-Gulde, A. (2005). Yoga und Bewegungsspiele für Kinder. Für 4- bis 10-Jährige. Munich,
Germany: Kösel.
Drake, C., & Gérard, C. (1989). A psychological pulse train: How young children use this cognitive frame-
work to structure simple rhythms. Psychological Research, 51, 16–22.
Drake, C., Jones, M. R., & Baruch, C. (2000). The development of rhythmic attending in auditory
sequences: Attunement, referent period, focal attending. Cognition, 77, 251–288.
Fisher, D., & McDonald, N. (2001). The intersection between music and early literacy instruction:
Listening to literacy. Reading Improvement, 38, 106–115.
Flaugnacco, E., Lopez, L., Terribili, C., Zoia, S., Buda, S., Tilli, S., et al. (2014). Rhythm perception and
production predict reading abilities in developmental dyslexia. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8,
Article 392. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00392
Fricke, S., & Schäfer, B. (2011). Test für Phonologische Bewusstheitsfähigkeiten, TPB. Idstein, Germany:
Schulz-Kirchner.
François, C., Chobert, J., Besson, M., & Schön, D. (2013). Music training for the development of speech
segmentation. Cerebral Cortex, 23, 2038–2043. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhs180
Gordon, R. L., Fehd, H. M., & McCandliss, B. D. (2015). Does music training enhance literacy skills? A
meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 1777. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01777
Goswami, U. (2011). A temporal sampling framework for developmental dyslexia. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 15, 1. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.10.001
Gromko, J. E. (2005). The effect of music instruction on phonemic awareness in beginning readers. Journal
of Research in Music Education 53, 199–209. doi: 10.1177/002242940505300302
Herrera, L., Lorenzo, O., Defior, S., Fernandez-Smith, G., & Costa-Giomi, E. (2011). Effects of phonologi-
cal and musical training on the reading readiness of native- and foreign-Spanish-speaking children.
Psychology of Music, 39, 68–81. doi: 10.1177/0305735610361995
Holliman, A. J., Wood, C., & Sheehy, K. (2010). The contribution of sensitivity to speech and non-
speech rhythm to early reading development. Educational Psychology, 30, 247–267. doi:
10.1080/01443410903560922
Huss, M., Verney, J. P., Fosker, T., Mead, N., & Goswami, U. (2010). Music, rhythm, rise time perception
and developmental dyslexia: Perception of musical meter predicts reading and phonology. Cortex,
47, 674–689. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2010.07.010
Koelsch, W., & Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 9, 578–584.
Küspert, P., & Schneider, W. (2003). Hören, lauschen, lernen: Sprachspiele für Kinder im Vorschulalter:
Würzburger Trainingsprogramm zur Vorbereitung auf den Erwerb der Schriftsprache. Göttingen,
Germany: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
Lerdahl, F., & Jackendoff, R. (1983). An overview of hierarchical sturcture in music. Music Perception, 1,
229–252.
Marx, P. (2007). Lese- und Rechtschreiberwerb. Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh UTP.
McMullen, E., & Saffran, J. R. (2004). Music and language: A developmental comparison. Music Perception,
21(3), 289–311. doi: 10.1525/mp.2004.21.3.289
Patscheke et al. 15

McPherson, G. E. (2016). The child as musician: A handbook of musical development. Oxford, UK: University
Press.
Miendlarzewska, E. A., & Trost, W. J. (2014). How musical training affects cognitive development:
Rhythm, reward and other modulating variables. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7, Article 279. doi:
10.3389/fnins.2013.00279
Moreno, S., Bialytok, E., Barac, R., Schellenberg, E. G., Cepeda, N. J., & Chau, T. (2011). Short-term music
training enhances verbal intelligence and executive function. Psychological Science, 22, 1425–1433.
doi: 10.1177/0956797611416999
Moreno, S., Marques, C., Santos, A., Santos, M., Castro, S. L., & Besson, M. (2009). Musical training influ-
ences linguistic abilities in 8-year-old children: More evidence for brain plasticity. Cerebral Cortex, 19,
712–723. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhn120
Moritz, C., Yampolsky, S., Papadelis, G., Thomson, J., & Wolf, M. (2013). Links between early rhythm
skills, musical training, and phonological awareness. Reading and Writing, 26, 739–769. doi:
10.1007/s11145–012–9389–0
Nykrin, R., Grüner, M., & Widmer, M. (Eds.). (2007). Musik und Tanz für Kinder. Mainz, Germany:
Schott.
Overy, K., Nicolson, R. I., Fawcett, A. J., & Clarke, E. F. (2003). Dyslexia and music: Measuring musical
timing skills. Dyslexia, 9, 18–36. doi: 10.1002/dys.233
Paananen, P. A. (2007). Melodic improvisation at the age of 6–11 years: Development of pitch and
rhythm. Musicae Scientiae, 11, 89–119.
Patscheke, H., Degé, F., & Schwarzer, G. (2016). The effects of training in music and phonological skills on
phonological awareness in 4- to 6-year-old children of immigrant families. Frontiers in Psychology, 7,
Article 1647, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01647
Patel, A. D. (2008). Music, language, and the brain. Oxford, UK: University Press.
Patel, A. D. (2011). Why sould musical training benefit the neural encoding of speech? The OPERA
hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, Article 142. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00142
Patel, A. D. (2014). Can nonlinguistic musical training change the way the brain processes speech? The
expanded OPERA hypothesis. Hearing Research, 308, 98–108. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.08.011
Petkov, C. I., O’Connor, K. N., Benmoshe, G., Baynes, K., & Sutter, M. L. (2005). Auditory perceptual
grouping and attention in dyslexia. Cognitive Brain Research, 24, 343–354. doi:10.1016/j.cogbrain-
res.2005.02.021
Plume, E., & Schneider, W. (2004). Hören, Lauschen, Lernen 2 – Sprachspiele mit Buchstaben und Lauten für
Kinder im Vorschulalter. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
Randel, D. M. (1978). Harvard concise dictionary of music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universitiy Press.
Rost, D. H. (2005). Interpretation und Bewertung pädagotisch-psychologischer Studien. Weinheim, Germany:
Belz.
Rautenberg, I. (2015). The effects of musical training on the decoding skills of German speaking primary
school children. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(1), 1–17. doi: 10.1111/jrir.12010
Saffran, J. R. (2003). Musical learning and language development: Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, 999, 397–401. doi: 10.1196/annals.1284.001
Schön, D., Gordon, R., Campagne, A., Magne, C., Astésano, C., Anton, J. L., et al. (2010). Similar cerebral
networks in language, music and song perception. Neuroimage, 51, 450–461. doi: 10.1016/j.neu-
roimage.201002.023
Smith, K. C., Cuddy, L. L., & Upitis, R. (1994). Figural and metric understanding of rhythm. Psychology of
Music, 22, 117–135.
Thiessen, E., Hill, E., & Saffran, J. (2005). Infant-directed speech facilitates word segmentation. Infancy,
7, 53–71.
Thomson, J. M., & Goswami, U. (2008). Rhythmic processing in children with developmental dyslexia:
Auditory and motor rhythms link to reading and spelling. Journal of Physiology, 102, 120–129. doi:
10.1016/j.jphysparis.2008.03.007
Tierney, A., & Kraus, N. (2013). Music training for the development of reading skills. Progress in Brain
Research, 207, 209–241. doi: 10.1016/B978–0–444–63327–9.00008–4
16 Psychology of Music 00(0)

Tierney, A., & Kraus, N. (2014). Auditory-motor entrainment and phonological skills: Precise audi-
tory timing hypothesis (PATH). Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, Article 949. doi: 10.3389/
fnhum.2014.00949
Tighe, T. J., & Dowling, W. J. (1993). Psychology and music: The understanding of melody and rhythm.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Trehub, S. E., Thorpe, L. A., & Morrongiello, B. A. (1987). Organizational processes in infants’ perception
of auditory patterns. Child Development, 58, 741–749.
Trehub, S., & Trainor, L. (1998). Singing to infants: Lullabies and playsongs. Advances in Infancy Research,
12, 43–77.
Verney, J. P. (2009). Rhythmic perception and entrainment in 5-year-old children. An exploration of the
relationship between temporal accuracy at four isochronous rates and its impact on phonological
awareness and reading development (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK.
Weiss, R., & Osterland, J. (1997). Grundintelligenztest, CFT 1. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
White-Schwoch, T., Carr, K. W., Anderson, S., Strait, D. L., & Kraus, N. (2013). Older adults benefit from
music training early in life: Biological evidence for long term training-driven plasticity. Journal of
Neuroscience, 33, 17667–17674. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2560–13.2013
Wolff, P. (2002). Timing precision and rhythm in developmental dyslexia. Reading and Writing, 15, 179–
206. doi: 10.1023/A:1013880723925
Woodruff Carr, K., White-Schwoch, T., Tierney, A. T., Strait, D. L., & Kraus, N. (2014). Beat synchro-
nization predicts neural speech encoding and reading readiness in preschoolers. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 14559–14564. doi: 10.1073/
pnas.1406219111
Witton, C., Talcott, J. B., Hansen, P. C., Richardson, A. J., Griffiths, T. D., Rees, A., et al. (1998). Sensitivity
to dynamic auditory and visual stimuli predicts nonword reading ability in both dyslexics and nor-
mal readers. Current Biology, 8, 791-797.
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia and skilled reading
across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 3–29. doi:
10.1037/0033–2909.131.1.3

View publication stats