Recent research links disparities in children's language-related brain function to

poverty and its correlates. Such disparities are hypothesized to underlie achievement
gaps between students from low-income families and more advantaged peers.
Interventions that improve language-related brain function in low-income students
exist, but evaluations of their implementation within high poverty elementary schools
do not. This comparison group study evaluates whether implementation within high
poverty elementary schools of Harmony Project music-based mentoring, previously
shown in randomized controlled research to improve language-related brain function
and literacy in low-income students, might be associated with academic
improvement for participants compared with non participating peers. Standardized
academic achievement scores were evaluated retrospectively for 2nd graders who
opted into or out of Harmony Project (HP) at baseline (n(HP) = 218; n(non-Hp) =
862) for weekly music-based mentoring over 2 years. Adjusting for baseline scores,
HP participation was associated with higher standardized scores for math (+17
points; beta = .06, p = .02) and English language arts (+26 points; beta = .08, p =
.002). Importantly, students with the lowest prior achievement scores showed the
greatest gains for both math (+33 points; beta =.13, p =.02) and English language
arts (+39 points; beta =.14, p =.02). Implementation within high poverty elementary
schools of a program previously found to improve language-related brain function in
low-income students was associated with significant academic improvement for
participants, particularly those with the lowest prior levels of achievement. Findings
support the hypothesis that disparities in children's language-related brain function
linked to poverty and its correlates may underlie achievement gaps.

Literacy is a common goal of early childhood programs in libraries. Through the

Every Child Ready to Read initiative of the American Library Association, librarians
emphasize educating caregivers and parents to work with their children on early
literacy skills (Every Child Ready to Read, n.d.).This program identifies singing as
one of five core practices in early childhood library literacy programming. Based on
this priority on singing in early childhood library programming, there seems to be a
valuing of music by library organizers. However, little is known about the musical
background and preparation of librarians and library associates who lead storytimes.
This instrumental case study of children's librarians and library associates'
documented the use of music by participants in library storytime programming (n =
13) as well as their perceptions about music. The researchers employed qualitative
data analysis procedures to arrive at four themes, which encompassed the
participants' positive perceptions of the role of music in children's lives; participants'
passion for early literacy; their emphasis on family mentoring; and the diverse music
backgrounds that led to diverse approaches of incorporating music into library
programming. In our discussion we note the similarities between our population and
early childhood generalist teachers who use music in their classrooms, suggesting
potential application of prior research. We conclude with implications for librarians
and library associates, early childhood teachers, and the early childhood music
community.
The ability to synchronise one's movements to the sound of a regular beat has been
found to be associated with children's language and reading abilities. Sensorimotor
synchronisation or tapping performance can among other factors [e.g., working
memory and rapid automatized naming (RAN)] predict phonological awareness and
word reading accuracy and fluency of first graders. While tapping tasks that use a
simple metronome sound are more often used, applying musical stimuli has the
potential advantage of being more engaging and motivating for children. In the
present study, we investigated whether tapping to a metronome beat or complex
musical stimuli would predict phonological awareness and reading outcomes of
Hungarian 6-7-year olds (N=37). We also measured participants' general cognitive
abilities (RAN, non-verbal intelligence and verbal working memory). Our results show
that phonological awareness, spelling and reading accuracy were associated with
the musical tasks while reading fluency was predicted by the metronome trials. Our
findings suggest that complex musical tasks should be considered when
investigating this age group, as they were, in general, more effective in predicting
literacy outcomes.

There is a substantial body of evidence that demonstrates links between language

and music and between music and improved cognitive ability, particularly with regard
to verbal and working memory, in both adults and children. However, there is often a
mix of type of musical training and instrument used and use of musical notation. The
research reported here uses a randomised controlled trial with 32 novice children,
aged seven, learning to play the piano with both hands whilst reading music notation.
The intervention was conducted in a school setting, each child receiving in total four
hours of instruction. Results confirm previous findings that short-term music
instruction improves working memory. Results also demonstrated that children with
this musical training outperformed controls on a word identification measure. Overall,
the results show evidence for a causal relationship between music learning and
improvements in verbal skills. The significant differences occurred after only one
term of instruction and were stable 3 months post-intervention.

Background: Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) learners have unique
needs, and specific pedagogies, therefore, need to be employed to support the
acquisition of their essential skills. A great deal of research has been conducted on
the use of music-based pedagogies to teach mathematics, life skills, civics and
literacy at various levels of education. In South Africa, where ECCE is a relatively
new educational sector, very little structure has been put in place to facilitate using
music-based pedagogies to teach communication skills to ECCE learners. Aim: The
aim of this study was to explore ECCE educators use music-based pedagogies to
positively impact children's communication skills and language development. Setting:
The qualitative case study was conducted at two Urban ECCE centers in Durban,
KwaZulu Natal Province, South African. Method: The study was informed by a social
constructivist paradigm underpinned by Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, focussing on
ECCE learners' interaction with the more knowledgeable other (MKO). Data were
generated through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations with six
educators, and through document analysis. The data were analysed using thematic
analysis. Findings: The study confirmed that the ECCE educators have some levels
of understanding of using music-based pedagogies as a strategy for teaching
communication skills to children aged from three to four, but there are constraints.
These limitations include insufficient training, a lack of musical resources and the
non-inclusion of music-based pedagogies in both the pre-service teachers'
curriculum and the ECCE curriculum. Conclusions: The study recommended a
comprehensive review of the content and implementation of the ECCE curriculum in
relation to music pedagogy.

Musical training has been shown to have a positive influence on a variety of skills,
including auditory-based tasks and nonmusical cognitive and executive functioning
tasks; however, because previous investigations have yielded mixed results
regarding the relationship between musical training and these skills, the purpose of
this study was to examine and compare the auditory processing skills of children
who receive focused, daily musical training with those with more limited, generalized
musical training. Sixteen typically developing children (second-fourth grade) from two
different schools receiving different music curricula were assessed on measures of
pitch discrimination, temporal sequencing, and prosodic awareness. The results
indicated significantly better scores in pitch discrimination abilities for the children
receiving daily, focused musical training (School 1) compared to students attending
music class only once per week, utilizing a more generalized elementary school
music curriculum (School 2). The findings suggest that more in-depth and frequent
musical training may be associated with better pitch discrimination abilities in
children. This finding is important given that the ability to discriminate pitch has been
linked to improved phonological processing skills, an important skill for developing
spoken language and literacy. Future investigations are needed to determine
whether the null findings for temporal sequencing and prosodic awareness can be
replicated or may be different for various grades and tasks for measuring these
abilities.

A number of studies suggest a link between musical training and both specific and
general cognitive abilities, but despite some positive results, there is disagreement
about which abilities are improved. This study aims to investigate the effects of a
music education program both on a domain-specific competence (meta-musical
awareness), and on general domain competences, that is, cognitive abilities
(logical-mathematical) and symbolic-linguistic abilities (notational). Twenty 4- to
6-year-old children participated in the research, divided into two groups
(experimental and control) and the measures were administered at two different
times, before and after a 6-month music program (for the experimental group) and
after a sports training program (for the control group). Children performed
meta-musical awareness tasks, logical-mathematical tasks, and
emergent-alphabetization tasks. Non-parametric statistics show that a music
program significantly improves the development of notational skills and meta-musical
awareness while not the development of logical-mathematical skills. These results
show that a musical program increases children's meta-musical awareness, and their
ability to acquire the notational ability involved in the invented writing of words and
numbers. On the contrary, it does not affect the development of logical skills. The
results are discussed in terms of transfer of knowledge processes and of specific
versus general domain effects of a musical program.

It is important that before entering primary school, the child's phonological

awareness is supported by a variety of different activities whereby phonological
awareness is based on a well-developed hearing ability. Hearing is part of the
musical activities that support/encourage phonological awareness with the
development of rhythmic and melodic music listening. In this article, we aimed to
investigate the effects of musical activities derived from the methodological system
of Edward Willems on phonological awareness through a quasi-experimental study
with 70 children aged 4 to 7 years. Thirty-five of them received 1 hr of music
instruction per week for 6 months (experimental group) and the other 35 children
received no such musical support (control group). We tested each child's
phonological awareness at the beginning of the music program and after 6 months.
The results of the analysis of covariance showed that there was a statistically
significant difference in phonological awareness between the experimental and
control groups in favor of the experimental group. The results of the research
confirmed that musical activities based on the methodological system Edgar Willems
are a good and effective means of promoting phonological awareness, especially in
early childhood.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of an emotional induction through
music on children's and adults' performances in detecting spelling errors. Recent
studies show that negative emotional induction can alter children's grammatical
spelling performances depending on the writer's expertise level and on the task
complexity. Using a computerized subject-verb agreement judgment task,
participants' performances could be analyzed using two main criteria: their success
at the task (i.e., percentage of errors) and the execution time required (i.e., response
time). The results show no effect of emotional induction on error detection
performance. In contrast, there is a deleterious effect of negative emotional induction
on task execution time. This effect varies according to sentence type and
participants' expertise level. Negative emotional induction is associated with longer
response times for complex sentences (SP) and for novice writers (CE2) only.

Music education has been demonstrated to positively influence the development of

early literacy with the type of intervention identified as a moderating factor. However,
research comparing the effects of different music education approaches on
phonological awareness and early literacy is limited. This systematic review aimed to
compare the effect of the predominant music education approaches, namely Orff,
Kodaly, Suzuki and Dalcroze, on phonological awareness and early literacy. The
PRISMA-P protocol was followed, and the study was registered with PROSPERO
(CRD42018094131). Five electronic databases were searched. Eligibility criteria
included peer reviewed English-language journal publications of quasi-experimental
or experimental research studies with typically developing populations aged five to
eight years old. Musical intervention had to be based on the principles of the Orff,
Kodaly, Suzuki or Dalcroze music education approaches or a combination thereof.
Narrative synthesis was used in data analysis. From 329 records identified, five
articles, from 1975 to 2013, qualified for final inclusion. The sample was
heterogeneous regarding population characteristics, music education frequency and
duration and abilities assessed. The outcomes from the included studies showed
that music education improved aspects of phonological awareness and early literacy.
However, standardization of methodological aspects would be required for definite
comparisons between the music education approaches to be made. Although direct
effects of the music education approaches could not be described, the review
outlined factors, such as methodological diversity, that influence the investigation of
skill transfer from music education to literacy abilities. The lack of and need for
research from lower- middle income countries investigating music education as an
intervention approach for phonological awareness and early literacy was identified.

For children born in the 21st century, the enmeshing of natural and human forces in
the survival of the planet requires conceptual and practical innovation. This paper
comes from a project funded by the Australian Research Council investigating the
integration of literacy and sustainability in early years learning. The methodology
employed was 'deep hanging out', the purpose of which is to observe without bias or
assumption. This paper focuses on a video from a preschool depicting children
playing drums and percussion instruments outside, in the playground. We consider
the nature of literacy differently, conceptualizing literacy+sustainability within the
context of the more-than-human, intra-active world. In our example, the drumming
ebbs and flows in intensity, children come and go, rhythms merge then diverge; a
chaos of sound and vibration, a refrain of rhythm, movement and bodies, driven by
the excess of the earth's energy and musical force. We see children communicate a
sense of the world - with drums, each other, earth - sustained by the vitality of place,
the materiality of drums and sound, the energy of earth and the movement of bodies.
In this example, we extend the conversation around what literacy and sustainability
might look like, offering possibilities for producing new knowledge about literacy and
new understandings of sustainability.

Multiple studies and systematic reviews have shown that music instruction improves
phonological awareness (PA) and early literacy skills in children, although findings
vary. In meta-analyses, the reliability and significance of the transfer effect are
reduced. The study evaluated the effect of varying durations of music instruction
exposure, over a single academic year, on PA and early literacy of young children.
Based on the exposure to music instruction, participants were assigned to either a
low- or high-exposure group. Additional analyses were conducted for 17
age-matched pairs and to compare participants that only received class music to
those that received additional music instruction. Between-groups comparisons
showed no significant difference after a single academic year of music instruction.
Within-groups comparisons identified more PA improvements in the high-exposure
group. Exposure to music instruction for no less than one academic year, is required
to conclusively evaluate the effect on PA and early literacy.

Music training has repeatedly been claimed to positively impact children's cognitive
skills and academic achievement (literacy and mathematics). This claim relies on the
assumption that engaging in intellectually demanding activities fosters particular
domain-general cognitive skills, or even general intelligence. The present
meta-analytic review (N= 6,984,k= 254,m= 54) shows that this belief is incorrect.
Once the quality of study design is controlled for, the overall effect of music training
programs is null ((g) over bar approximate to 0) and highly consistent across studies
(tau(2) approximate to 0). Results of Bayesian analyses employing distributional
assumptions (informative priors) derived from previous research in cognitive training
corroborate these conclusions. Small statistically significant overall effects are
obtained only in those studies implementing no random allocation of participants and
employing non-active controls ((g) over bar approximate to 0.200,p< .001).
Interestingly, music training is ineffective regardless of the type of outcome measure
(e.g., verbal, non-verbal, speed-related, etc.), participants' age, and duration of
training. Furthermore, we note that, beyond meta-analysis of experimental studies, a
considerable amount of cross-sectional evidence indicates that engagement in music
has no impact on people's non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement. We
conclude that researchers' optimism about the benefits of music training is
empirically unjustified and stems from misinterpretation of the empirical data and,
possibly, confirmation bias.

Early vocabulary knowledge is vital for later reading comprehension and academic
success. Studies have found that augmenting explicit teaching of word meanings
with nonverbal visual aids, particularly pictures and gestures, assists young learners
in building rich lexical representations. Research has focused on the effects of visual
supports in fostering word knowledge but has not considered the effectiveness of
using sound-based supports. Working from a semiotics perspective, the authors
used a music instructional strategy known as a sound story to examine the impact of
using sound effects to teach words to first-grade students. Words were taught with
explicit instruction in combination with sound effects or no sound effects during music
class. All sound effects were created and performed using musical instruments in the
classroom. Students' receptive and productive definitional word knowledge were
assessed. The productive measure was used as a measure of depth of word
knowledge. The authors found that students had deeper knowledge of words that
were taught with an associated sound effect compared with words taught with no
sound effect. Analysis of the types of information students provided about words
showed that students gave more contextual information and gestural responses for
words that were taught with sound compared with words taught with no sound.
These results provide evidence that vocabulary learning can be fostered during
specialist music classes using methods familiar to music educators.

Writer Roald Dahl is responsible for some of the most imaginative stories that
universal literature has given us in the 20th century. These stories, their characters,
and an inimitable style, have created a unique universe that is part of a cultural
heritage which is transmitted from generation to generation. This universe remains in
the unconscious of the community in the whole world. The reference, direct or
indirect, to the world of music, is one of the resources that the author uses
recurrently and intentionally with different purposes: as a metaphor for social
criticism, as a resource for dramatization, for psychological characterization of the
character, etc. He does it, moreover, with an in-depth knowledge of the resources
that this medium offers to literary expression, and of the theoretical substrates of the
musical art itself. The present work represents an approximation to the role played
by the universe of sounds in Dahl's work; from the references in his work, the
creation of operas or musicals based on his stories, or the use and identifications of
his compositions as a teaching resource in training and promoting reading in the
earliest stages of education.

Rhythm perception seems to be crucial to language development. Many studies

have shown that children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language
disorder have difficulties in processing rhythmic structures. In this study, we
investigated the relationships between prosody and musical processing in Italian
children with typical and atypical development. The tasks aimed to reproduce
linguistic prosodic structures through musical sequences, offering a direct
comparison between the two domains without violating the specificities of each one.
About 16 Typically Developing children, 16 children with a diagnosis of
Developmental Dyslexia, and 16 with a diagnosis of developmental language
disorder (age 10-13 years) participated in the experimental study. Three tasks were
administered: an association task between a sentence and its humming version, a
stress discrimination task (between couples of sounds reproducing the intonation of
Italian trisyllabic words), and an association task between trisyllabic nonwords with
different stress position and three-notes musical sequences with different musical
stress. Children with developmental language disorder perform significantly lower
than Typically Developing children on the humming test. By contrast, children with
developmental dyslexia are significantly slower than TD in associating nonwords with
musical sequences. Accuracy and speed in the experimental tests correlate with
metaphonological, language, and word reading scores. Theoretical and clinical
implications are discussed within a multidimensional model of neurodevelopmental
disorders including prosodic and rhythmic skills at word and sentence level.
Intergenerational programs are becoming increasingly common, yet little data exists
on programs involving young children and older adults. The purpose of this
randomized-controlled trial was to identify the effects of an intergenerational music
therapy program on children?s literacy, older adults? physical functioning and
self-worth, and interactions between the two age groups. Participants were three-
and four-year-old children and older adults aged 72?98. Results indicate positive
trends in nearly every dependent variable studied and a statistically significant
positive outcome for the interaction between children and adults. Additionally,
interviews of the older adults? perception of the program revealed six positive
themes.

Music is constantly present in our daily life and brings with it historical, social and
cultural characteristics, being a form of expression, of communication, of reflection,
that can excite, sprout feelings, memories and even upset, since musicality
integrates human life and the relationships between music, gesture, rhythm and
expressiveness of the body. In the same way, music is part of the corporeality of
children even before literacy, so it becomes a fundamental artifact to develop
pedagogical activities with children in Early Childhood Education. We problematize in
this study that musicality is still relegated to the background or as phyxiated in
children's school routines. We show that in addition to the verbal, sound and
rhythmic message translated by music, the development of the child's creative
imagination, intuition and emotional intelligence is inscribed in it. The results indicate
that it is necessary to recover the dimensions of music with communication,
sensitivity and the art of educating in school, as a way to increase enjoyment with
the moments of class and with the world, manifested constantly by the expression of
feelings, thoughts, planned actions, opinions, or chestrated, harmonic or unbalanced
reflective attitudes. However, musical education can contribute to the global and
evolving development of children, provided that the cadences of multiplicity of voices
and differences are respected and recognized.

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.

Recent developments in the sociology of education highlight the importance of the

school as a site for the transformation of students' everyday knowledge into a more
ordered and systemised form that provides the means for the development of
creative conceptual higher order thinking. However, in recent times there has been a
shift towards a dedifferentiation between knowledge and experience in education as
well as a shift in the conceptualisation of the role of the teacher from expert
pedagogue to facilitator.. In this paper we report on the work of one of the authors
whose approach to music teaching in the primary school may be seen to exemplify
Vygotsky's ideas about the purpose of education and the role of the teacher. In the
former, the purpose of education is to provide the context for the exposure to a form
of mediated learning. In the later, the teacher takes on the expert role of mediator in
assisting students in making developmental connections between spontaneous
concepts and scientific concepts. Interestingly while achieving this within a literacy
context, Round (the teacher in this study) also found students' musical knowledge
was developed and enhanced.

Since 1992, our nation's report card (NAEP) has indicated minimal improvement in
reading. One of every three fourth grade students cannot read or understand text at
a basic proficient level. At the same time, reading curricula publishers have
approached reading improvement in similar ways. Recent advancements in
technology allow educators to reconsider how to personalize learning and
individualize the pace of instruction to address reading disparities. The current study
examines the implementation of a new technology application for reading,
Lyrics2Learn (L2L). L2L was used over one school year by 463 students,
kindergarten to third grade across nine schools in a large urban school district.
Achievement data was collected from L2L students and a matched sample of
students not using L2L. L2L teachers also provided perception data via an online
survey. L2L program analytics were collected to document usage and
implementation fidelity. At the end of one year of implementation, L2L students did
not significantly differ from non-L2L students on achievement measures. Very few
teachers implemented L2L with fidelity, however they reported that it was easy to use
and supported differentiation of instruction. The current study has implications for
how technology can support individualized reading interventions and classroom
innovation.

Reading is a key skill in any type of learning process. Spanish students' results are
low in national and international assessment scales. Reading processes are complex
and the skill transferences between languages are not always positive. This
action-research study analyses a fourth primary students' population with Spanish as
the language of schooling and English as a foreign language. The research
instruments used were phonemic awareness, literacy and vocabulary tests. It is
shown that, when a reading intervention programme is carried out with English
subtitled musical videos, phonemic awareness improves as sounds, prosodic
elements and vocabulary are practiced. Students improve their reading fluency, text
comprehension and their learning motivation.

What are the relationships between Music and Language? The analysis disclosed in
the text is an expression of the research carried out under the AMUSIA project,
realized during the school years 2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 in the 1st
degree Secondary School named Comprehensive Institute San Giuseppe
Calasanzio in Milan. The researchers' aim was to verify whether and how musical
education and practice could affect both the linguistic ability (production and reading)
in groups of monolingual (Italian) and bilingual (foreign) students. Through the
examination of the literature concerning the relationship between music and
language and in the light of several recent neuroscientific studies, it has been
possible to identify in the first part of the text what structures and cognitive functions
are shared both in the musical domain and in the linguistic one. In the second part of
the dissertation the experimental research is described, presenting the objectives,
the sample, the measures taken, the analysis of the collected data and the
discussion of the possible interactions between the effects of musical practice and
the linguistic state (mono-lingualism, bi-lingualism) in relation to the ability to
manipulate oral and reading language.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between phonological
awareness and music aptitude. I administered the Intermediate Measures of Music
Audiation (IMMA) to second-grade students in a rural school in Pennsylvania (N =
17). Speech-language specialists administered a hearing screening and The
Phonological Awareness Test 2 (PAT-2) individually to participants and scored the
measures. Findings indicated a moderate, positive relationship between PAT-2
standardized composite scores and IMMA raw Tonal subtest scores (r = .485). A
linear regression indicated IMMA raw Tonal subtest scores predicted PAT-2
standardized composite scores. The relationship between music aptitude and
phonological awareness has implications for students, music teachers, and
professionals who may remediate literacy skills, such as reading specialists,
speech-language pathologists, and music therapists.

Sound is an invisible but powerful force that is central to everyday life. Studies in the
neurobiology of everyday communication seek to elucidate the neural mechanisms
underlying sound processing, their stability, their plasticity, and their links to language
abilities and disabilities. This sound processing lies at the nexus of cognitive,
sensorimotor, and reward networks. Music provides a powerful experimental model
to understand these biological foundations of communication, especially with regard
to auditory learning. We review studies of music training that employ a biological
approach to reveal the integrity of sound processing in the brain, the bearing these
mechanisms have on everyday communication, and how these processes are
shaped by experience. Together, these experiments illustrate that music works in
synergistic partnerships with language skills and the ability to make sense of speech
in complex, everyday listening environments. The active, repeated engagement with
sound demanded by music making augments the neural processing of speech,
eventually cascading to listening and language. This generalization from music to
everyday communications illustrates both that these auditory brain mechanisms
have a profound potential for plasticity and that sound processing is biologically
intertwined with listening and language skills. A new wave of studies has pushed
neuroscience beyond the traditional laboratory by revealing the effects of community
music training in underserved populations. These community-based studies reinforce
laboratory work highlight how the auditory system achieves a remarkable balance
between stability and flexibility in processing speech. Moreover, these community
studies have the potential to inform health care, education, and social policy by
lending a neurobiological perspective to their efficacy.

Drawing on a study of children's musical games in urban South Africa, this article
employs two theoretical frames: that of multimodality and the multiliteracies
pedagogy. These are applied to a contextual analysis of the forms of musicality that
musical games embody and to ways of incorporating children's play into pedagogy.
Based on ethnographic research in primary schools in Soweto, I first examine
representative examples of musical games in order to demonstrate children's
musicianship in relation to the concept of multimodality. Analysis reveals the games'
sophistication in terms of children's deployment of multiple modes and the
inventiveness their methods imply. Furthermore, a multimodal theoretical frame and
analytical approach enables an understanding of musicality as the capacity to
design. Second, children's multimodal musicality prompts questions about how such
musicality may become a resource in formal learning. I propose that applying the
multiliteracies pedagogy to music education offers a methodological solution for
recruiting musical games so that the capacities children demonstrate in their games
may be developed.

The sense of efficaciousness for teaching diverse learners was examined with
twenty-four pre-service teachers concurrently enrolled in a junior-level Creative Arts
methods course and a field experience course with placements in K-2 general
education classrooms. The pre-service teachers participated in music and literacy
activities in their university class, then planned and implemented standards-based
music activities in literacy lessons with their young students. Both quantitative and
qualitative data were collected, including a teacher self-efficacy scale, an attitude
survey, written reflections, interviews, open-ended responses, and lesson plans.
Results demonstrated a significant increase in the pre-service teachers' self-efficacy
in pre-post ratings analysis and indicated that this project contributed to their efficacy
for meeting needs of diverse learners in the elementary classrooms. The pre-service
teachers demonstrated proactive classroom management and reflected upon their
students' increased focus in class. The pre-service teachers indicated that their
success with these types of projects encouraged them to plan for similar
implementation with their future diverse learners, potentially contributing to a positive
impact on their future performance. Additionally, this project emanated Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning by encouraging self-reflection; examining and applying
effective teaching strategies; and advancing the field of teacher education.

The association between human speech, language and communication (SLC) and
participation in music is manifest in music education and psychology literature in a
number of ways. Research studies into young children's SLC are numerous and
policy focus on this area of children's learning and development and their later
literacy has been intense. By contrast, there is a gap in research into young
children's musical worlds especially in the home, even though existing research
shows the additional benefits of shared music activities over shared reading activities
for children's prosocial skills and music making for parent-child communication. This
paper reports on a survey and interviews of parents carried out in England with a
focus on the musical activities of children aged birth to five in the home. Contrary to
previous studies, findings suggest that children participate in a range of spontaneous
shared musical activities in the home daily. The factors that both promote and inhibit
musical activities in the home for young children are highlighted. The study also
shows that children are participating in a wide range of organised, structured musical
activities outside the home. Research is needed to examine the quality of such
activities and the appropriateness of formal musical activities for very young children
to ensure that formality does not disturb spontaneity in young children's musical
worlds.
Children's daily, embodied music experiences are integral to how children live and
function in the world. Growing out of a line of work focusing on the interplay between
elementary children's daily experiences of music, both in- and out-of-school and the
impact on elementary music education curriculum, this research is nested within the
theoretical discourses of experience, children's musical culture, and children's
agency. Building upon this work, findings from a two-phase, 6-month inquiry, situated
in an urban, Canadian, Grade 1 French Immersion classroom, draw upon the tools of
ethnography and narrative inquiry, with the intention of deepening understandings of
how informal music-making and sound function in children's lives. Phase one
findings highlight: (1) the frequency and spontaneity of children's daily music
experiences, both in- and out-of-school, (2) the nature of how music and sound
function fluidly in a variety of contexts as integral to children's experience, and (3) the
power of musical behaviours in assisting young children to acquire French
vocabulary and literacy skills. Important considerations for teacher education include:
the necessity of creating space in elementary curriculum to engage children in
music-making, integrating and infusing the Arts fluidly across the curriculum, and
encouraging children autonomy in their musical engagement.

Well-developed phonological awareness skills are a core prerequisite for early

literacy development. Although effective phonological awareness training programs
exist, children at risk often do not reach similar levels of phonological awareness
after the intervention as children with normally developed skills. Based on theoretical
considerations and first promising results the present study explores effects of an
early musical training in combination with a conventional phonological training in
children with weak phonological awareness skills. Using a quasi-experimental
pretest-posttest control group design and measurements across a period of 2 years,
we tested the effects of two interventions: a consecutive combination of a musical
and a phonological training and a phonological training alone. The design made it
possible to disentangle effects of the musical training alone as well the effects of its
combination with the phonological training. The outcome measures of these groups
were compared with the control group with multivariate analyses, controlling for a
number of background variables. The sample included N = 424 German-speaking
children aged 45 years at the beginning of the study. We found a positive relationship
between musical abilities and phonological awareness. Yet, whereas the
well-established phonological training produced the expected effects, adding a
musical training did not contribute significantly to phonological awareness
development. Training effects were partly dependent on the initial level of
phonological awareness. Possible reasons for the lack of training effects in the
musical part of the combination condition as well as practical implications for early
literacy education are discussed.

Children in transition from kindergarten to school develop fundamental skills

important for the acquisition of reading and writing. Previous research pointed toward
substantial correlations between specific language- and music-related competencies
as well as positive transfer effects from music on pre-literacy skills. However, until
now the relationship between diverse music and language competencies remains
unclear. In the present study, we used a comprehensive approach to clarify the
relationships between a broad variety of language and music skills on different
levels, not only between but also within domains. In order to do so, we selected
representative language- and music related competencies and systematically
compared the performance of N = 44 5 to 7-year-old children with a control group of
N = 20 young adults aged from 20 to 30. Competencies were organized in distinct
levels according to varying units of vowels/sounds, words or syllables/short melodic
or rhythmic phrases, syntax/harmony and context of a whole story/song to test for
their interrelatedness within each domain. Following this, we conducted systematic
correlation analyses between the competencies of both domains. Overall, selected
competencies appeared to be appropriate for the measurement of language and
music skills in young children with reference to comprehension, difficulty and a
developmental perspective. In line with a hierarchical model of skill acquisition,
performance on lower levels was predictive for the performance on higher levels
within domains. Moreover, correlations between domains were stronger for
competencies reflecting a similar level of cognitive processing, as expected. In
conclusion, a systematic comparison of various competencies on distinct levels
according to varying units turned out to be appropriate regarding comparability and
interrelatedness. Results are discussed with regard to similarities and differences in
the development of language and music skills as well as in terms of implications for
further research on transfer effects from music on language.

Children's engagement in music practice is associated with enhancements in

literacy-related language skills, as demonstrated by multiple reports of correlation
across these two domains. Training studies have tested whether engaging in music
training directly transfers benefit to children's literacy skill development. Results of
such studies, however, are mixed. Interpretation of these mixed results is made more
complex by the fact that a wide range of literacy-related outcome measures are used
across these studies. Here, we address these challenges via a meta-analytic
approach. A comprehensive literature review of peer reviewed music training studies
was built around key criteria needed to test the direct transfer hypothesis, including:
(a) inclusion of music training vs. control groups; (b) inclusion of pre- vs.
post-comparison measures, and (c) indication that reading instruction was held
constant across groups. Thirteen studies were identified (n = 901). Two classes of
outcome measures emerged with sufficient overlap to support meta-analysis:
phonological awareness and reading fluency. Hours of training, age, and type of
control intervention were examined as potential moderators. Results supported the
hypothesis that music training leads to gains in phonological awareness skills. The
effect isolated by contrasting gains in music training vs. gains in control was small
relative to the large variance in these skills (d = 0.2). Interestingly, analyses revealed
that transfer effects for rhyming skills tended to grow stronger with increased hours
of training. In contrast, no significant aggregate transfer effect emerged for reading
fluency measures, despite some studies reporting large training effects. The
potential influence of other study design factors were considered, including
intervention design, IQ, and SES. Results are discussed in the context of emerging
findings that music training may enhance literacy development via changes in brain
mechanisms that support both music and language cognition.

Systematic reviews of research provide valuable information for researchers,

clinicians, and educators. A single Cochrane Review reports on music and dyslexia;
however, the struct inclusion criteria used in the study required randomized
controlled trials (RCT) which resulted in no study being able to be included. The
purpose of this systematic review was to identify and analyze research on music and
dyslexia. Through computer-based searches utilizing specific keywords and the
ancestry approach, 23 studies met inclusion criteria. Once identified, each study was
reviewed according to participants, age, purpose, independent and dependent
variables, and results. A table was created to outline the analysis of each study. The
majority of the 23 articles in the review included children. A few studies focused on
the challenges of studying music, in particular problems with reading notation, that
students with dyslexia may experience and most of the other studies explored how
music can be used to improve literacy skills, or at least be used as a means to test
for neural processing of auditory information, and thus could offer the potential to
inform early diagnosis. The findings from this review reveal that music training is
considered to function as a remediation tool to improve literacy skills for children with
dyslexia, although the specific type of music support to achieve predictable
outcomes needs to be further investigated. Some limitations, implications for clinical
practice, and suggestions for future research are provided. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All
rights reserved.

There is some evidence for a role of music training in boosting phonological

awareness, word segmentation, working memory, as well as reading abilities in
children with typical development. Poor performance in tasks requiring temporal
processing, rhythm perception and sensorimotor synchronization seems to be a
crucial factor underlying dyslexia in children. Interestingly, children with dyslexia
show deficits in temporal processing, both in language and in music. Within this
framework, we test the hypothesis that music training, by improving temporal
processing and rhythm abilities, improves phonological awareness and reading skills
in children with dyslexia. The study is a prospective, multicenter, open randomized
controlled trial, consisting of test, rehabilitation and re-test (ID NCT02316873). After
rehabilitation, the music group (N = 24) performed better than the control group (N =
22) in tasks assessing rhythmic abilities, phonological awareness and reading skills.
This is the first randomized control trial testing the effect of music training in
enhancing phonological and reading abilities in children with dyslexia. The findings
show that music training can modify reading and phonological abilities even when
these skills are severely impaired. Through the enhancement of temporal processing
and rhythmic skills, music might become an important tool in both remediation and
early intervention programs.

The increase in studies about the effect of music on the development of reading
skills has been noticeable. However, the overview of results is fragmented due to
multidisciplinary research mainly as regards L1 and with diverse results. This article
reviews studies of the last decade to outline the main effects found and to determine
the data collection instruments that have been used. It allows describing the current
state of the issue and recommending tools for future studies on the relationship of
music and reading skills in a foreign language.

Based on previous studies showing that phonological awareness is related to

reading abilities and that music training improves phonological processing, the aim of
the present study was to test for the efficiency of a new method for teaching to read
in a foreign language. Specifically, we tested the efficacy of a phonological training
program, with and without musical support that aimed at improving early reading
skills in 7-8-year-old Spanish children (n = 63) learning English as a foreign
language. Of interest was also to explore the impact of this training program on
working memory and decoding skills. To achieve these goals we tested three groups
of children before and after training: a control group, an experimental group with
phonological non-musical intervention (active control), and an experimental group
with musical intervention. Results clearly point to the beneficial effects of the
phonological teaching approach but the further impact of the music support was not
demonstrated. Moreover, while children in the music group showed low musical
aptitudes before training, they nevertheless performed better than the control group.
Therefore, the phonological training program with and without music support seem to
have significant effects on early reading skills.

Children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds tend to fall progressively further

behind their higher-income peers over the course of their academic careers. Music
training has been associated with enhanced language and learning skills, suggesting
that music programs could play a role in helping low-income children to stay on track
academically. Using a controlled, longitudinal design, the impact of group music
instruction on English reading ability was assessed in 42 low-ncome Spanish-English
bilingual children aged 6-9 years in Los Angeles. After one year, children who
received music training retained their age-normed level of reading performance while
a matched control group's performance deteriorated, consistent with expected
declines in this population. While the extent of change is modest, outcomes
nonetheless provide evidence that music programs may have value in helping to
counteract the negative effects of low-socioeconomic status on child literacy
development.

The young nervous system is primed for sensory learning, facilitating the acquisition
of language and communication skills. Social and linguistic impoverishment can limit
these learning opportunities, eventually leading to language-related challenges such
as poor reading. Music training offers a promising auditory learning strategy by
directing attention to meaningful acoustic elements of the soundscape. In light of
evidence that music training improves auditory skills and their neural substrates,
there are increasing efforts to enact community-based programs to provide music
instruction to at-risk children. Harmony Project is a community foundation that has
provided free music instruction to over 1000 children from Los Angeles
gang-reduction zones over the past decade. We conducted an independent
evaluation of biological effects of participating in Harmony Project by following a
cohort of children for 1 year. Here we focus on a comparison between students who
actively engaged with sound through instrumental music training vs. students who
took music appreciation classes. All children began with an introductory music
appreciation class, but midway through the year half of the children transitioned to
the instrumental training. After the year of training, the children who actively engaged
with sound through instrumental music training had faster and more robust neural
processing of speech than the children who stayed in the music appreciation class,
observed in neural responses to a speech sound /d/. The neurophysiological
measures found to be enhanced in the instrumentally-trained children have been
previously linked to reading ability, suggesting a gain in neural processes important
for literacy stemming from active auditory learning. Despite intrinsic constraints on
our study imposed by a community setting, these findings speak to the potential of
active engagement with sound (i.e., music-making) to engender
experience-dependent neuroplasticity and may inform the development of strategies
for auditory learning.

Temporal processing underlies both music and language skills. There is increasing
evidence that rhythm abilities track with reading performance and that language
disorders such as dyslexia are associated with poor rhythm abilities. However, little is
known about how basic time-keeping skills can be shaped by musical training,
particularly during critical literacy development years. This study was carried out in
collaboration with Harmony Project, a non-profit organization providing free music
education to children in the gang reduction zones of Los Angeles. Our findings
reveal that elementary school children with just one year of classroom music
instruction perform more accurately in a basic finger-tapping task than their untrained
peers, providing important evidence that fundamental time-keeping skills may be
strengthened by short-term music training. This sets the stage for further
examination of how music programs may be used to support the development of
basic skills underlying learning and literacy, particularly in at-risk populations which
may benefit the most.

There is growing evidence that children with reading difficulties show impaired
auditory rhythm perception and impairments in musical beat perception tasks.
Rhythmic musical interventions with poorer readers may thus improve rhythmic
entrainment and consequently improve reading and phonological skills. Here we
compare the effects of a musical intervention for poor readers with a software
intervention of known efficacy based on rhyme training and phoneme-grapheme
learning. The research question was whether the musical intervention would produce
gains of comparable effect sizes to the phoneme-grapheme intervention for children
who were falling behind in reading development. Broadly, the two interventions had
similar benefits for literacy, with large effect sizes.

Good reading literacy is one of the basic social and economic requirements for the
society of the 21st centuty. Not all pupils have sufficient reading literacy starting the
first grade. Poor reading literacy does not allow the pupils to synthesize melody with
the lyrics successfully; pupils concentrate on reading the lyrics but not on the
reproduction of sound and melody in specific rhythm and pitch. The aim of the
research is to develop specijic methodological techniques for learning the song lyrics
through the movement, in order to improve the singing skills of the pupils during the
integrated process of music teaching, taking into consideration the modern social
processes. The methods of the research: the article reflected the analysis of
scientific literature, the opinions are based on the use of the author teaching
experience. The article provides a standpoint and practical experience for learning
the song lyrics in combination with movements, gestures and mimics.

The purpose of this two-year study, supported in part by the National Endowment for
the Arts (NEA), was to examine the impact of musically trained early childhood
specialists on the music achievement and emergent literacy achievement of
preschool students. The sample, obtained through use of a letter of recruitment
mailed to a regional group of National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC) members, consisted of 11 teachers who met the criteria for the
project and their respective students (N = 165). Following a year of intensive staff
development training in musicianship skill and pedagogical strategies for guiding
young children's music development, the teachers implemented the curriculum in the
second year and several measures were used to collect data relative to student
music and literacy outcomes. Analyses included the nonparametric Mann-Whitney
U-test and multivariate techniques of MANCOVA and multiple regression. Results
were mixed for music achievement. Median scores were similar for the experimental
and control groups on use of singing voice. Students' tonal pattern achievement in
the experimental group was significantly higher but no significant differences were
found in children's rhythm-pattern achievement. When controlling for age and prior
knowledge, the music intervention significantly increased children's oral vocabulary
and grammatic understanding and was especially effective for children who began
with lower literacy skills.

Even though there are multiple literacies, the preoccupation and even reliance on the
primacy of functional literacy, as seen as an end-point in the formal process of
schooling, masks an ideology that rarely goes interrogated throughout all disciplines.
This article considers the obligation and structure of functional literacy, and, in
particular, scripted curriculum, as an imposition of meaning. Broad constructions of
literacy, as have been addressed in the general disciplines (including mathematics,
language arts, history, and science), provide a lens through which to consider those
ways sequential, scripted curriculum and pedagogy frame all disciplines, most
especially music.

Background Dyslexia (or developmental dyslexia or specific reading disability) is a

specific learning disorder that has a neurobiological origin. It is marked by difficulties
with accurate or fluent recognition of words and poor spelling in people who have
average or above average intelligence and these difficulties cannot be attributed to
another cause, for example, poor vision, hearing difficulty, or lack of
socio-environmental opportunities, motivation, or adequate instruction. Studies have
correlated reading skills with musical abilities. It has been hypothesized that musical
training may be able to remediate timing difficulties, improve pitch perception, or
increase spatial awareness, thereby having a positive effect on skills needed in the
development of language and literacy. Objectives To study the effectiveness of music
education on reading skills (that is, oral reading skills, reading comprehension,
reading fluency, phonological awareness, and spelling) in children and adolescents
with dyslexia. Search methods We searched the following electronic databases in
June 2012: CENTRAL (2012, Issue 5), MEDLINE (1948 to May Week 4 2012),
EMBASE (1980 to 2012 Week 22), CINAHL (searched 7 June 2012), LILACS
(searched 7 June 2012), PsycINFO (1887 to May Week 5 2012), ERIC (searched 7
June 2012), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1970 to 6 June 2012), Conference
Proceedings Citation Index - Social Sciences and Humanities (1990 to 6 June 2012),
and WorldCat (searched 7 June 2012). We also searched the WHO International
Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) and reference lists of studies. We did not
apply any date or language limits. Selection criteria We planned to include
randomized controlled trials. We looked for studies that included at least one of our
primary outcomes. The primary outcomes were related to the main domain of the
reading: oral reading skills, reading comprehension, reading fluency, phonological
awareness, and spelling, measured through validated instruments. The secondary
outcomes were self esteem and academic achievement. Data collection and analysis
Two authors (HCM and RBA) independently screened all titles and abstracts
identified through the search strategy to determine their eligibility. For our analysis
we had planned to use mean difference for continuous data, with 95% confidence
intervals, and to use the random-effects statistical model when the effect estimates
of two or more studies could be combined in a meta-analysis. Main results We
retrieved 851 references via the search strategy. No randomized controlled trials
testing music education for the improvement of reading skills in children with dyslexia
could be included in this review. Authors' conclusions There is no evidence available
from randomized controlled trials on which to base a judgment about the
effectiveness of music education for the improvement of reading skills in children and
adolescents with dyslexia. This uncertainty warrants further research via randomized
controlled trials, involving a interdisciplinary team: musicians, hearing and speech
therapists, psychologists, and physicians.

Introduction: Rhythm organises musical events into patterns and forms, and rhythm
perception in music is usually studied by using metrical tasks. Metrical structure also
plays an organisational function in the phonology of language, via speech prosody,
and there is evidence for rhythmic perceptual difficulties in developmental dyslexia.
Here we investigate the hypothesis that the accurate perception of musical metrical
structure is related to basic auditory perception of rise time, and also to phonological
and literacy development in children. Methods: A battery of behavioural tasks was
devised to explore relations between musical metrical perception, auditory
perception of amplitude envelope structure, phonological awareness (PA) and
reading in a sample of 64 typically-developing children and children with
developmental dyslexia. Results: We show that individual differences in the
perception of amplitude envelope rise time are linked to musical metrical sensitivity,
and that musical metrical sensitivity predicts PA and reading development,
accounting for over 60% of variance in reading along with age and I.Q. Even the
simplest metrical task, based on a duple metrical structure, was performed
significantly more poorly by the children with dyslexia. Conclusions: The accurate
perception of metrical structure may be critical for phonological development and
consequently for the development of literacy. Difficulties in metrical processing are
associated with basic auditory rise time processing difficulties, suggesting a primary
sensory impairment in developmental dyslexia in tracking the lower-frequency
modulations in the speech envelope. (C) 2010 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this quantitative action research study was to discover the effects of
music on the cognitive and literacy development of children ages six months to three
years of age. Over a thirteen week period, both the music group and the control
group took a child development pre-test and post test and the music group attended
eight music sessions. The early childhood developmental screening test was the
Developmental Assessment of Young Children (DAYC). The following research
questions guided the Literature Review and Methodology of this research study: 1.
What is the relationship between music and a child's cognitive development? 2.
What is the relationship between music and a child's literacy development? 3. What
is the relationship between the music environment provided at home and the child's
cognitive development? 4. What is the relationship between the music environment
provided at home and the child's literacy development? 5. What is the significance of
involving movement and freedom of expression with music in the curriculum of early
childhood programs? Findings from this study revealed insights on how music affects
children's cognitive development, literacy development, and social and emotional
development. This study also contributed to musical knowledge of parents
participating in the music sessions and gave the parents a better understanding of
how to implement music in the home. Each music session gave the parents and
children a twenty-five minute to forty-five minute time frame to focus on one another
and help develop the parent-child relationship. Results from the study helped guide
the researcher to write a music program curriculum for children ages birth to five.
The study also focused on the relationship between the music environment provided
at home and the child's cognitive and literacy development along with the
significance of involving movement and freedom of expression with music in the
curriculum of early childhood programs.

This paper reviews the empirical evidence relating to the effects of active
engagement with music on the intellectual, social and personal development of
children and young people. It draws on research using the most advanced
technologies to study the brain, in addition to quantitative and qualitative
psychological and educational studies. It explains how musical skills may transfer to
other activities if the processes involved are similar. It explores the evidence relating
to the impact of musical skills on language development, literacy, numeracy,
measures of intelligence, general attainment, creativity, fine motor co-ordination,
concentration, self-confidence, emotional sensitivity, social skills, team work,
self-discipline, and relaxation. It suggests that the positive effects of engagement
with music on personal and social development only occur if it is an enjoyable and
rewarding experience. This has implications for the quality of the teaching.

This research examines the effect of a music training programme on the

development of phonological awareness among 104 Franco-Canadian kindergarten
children. The experimental group (N = 51) participated in an adapted version of the
Standley and Hughes music training programme, while the control group (N = 53)
took part in the Ministere de l'Education du Quebec music programme. The analysis
of our data shows that both music programmes contributed similarly to the
development of tonal and rhythmic perceptive skills. However, the experimental
music training programme proved to be more effective when it came to developing
phonological awareness skills, in conclusion, this article argues that auditory
perception, phonological memory and metacognitive abilities play an essential role in
the development of musical and linguistic skills.
PAST RESEARCH HAS SHOWN THAT MUSIC and language skills are related in
normal-reading children as well as in children with dyslexia. In both an ongoing
longitudinal study with normal-reading children and a pilot study with children with
dyslexia, we found a strong relationship between musical discrimination abilities and
language-related skills. In normal-reading children, musical discrimination predicted
phonological and reading skills (Studies 1 and 2). These relationships were stronger
in children with music training than in control children without music training. In
children with dyslexia, musical discrimination predicted phonological skills, which in
turn predicted reading abilities (Study 3). Furthermore, normal-reading children with
music training surpassed both normal-reading controls and children with dyslexia in
melodic discrimination. Controls also outperformed children with dyslexia (Study 4).
Taken together, these findings suggest that a music intervention that strengthens the
basic auditory music perception skills of children with dyslexia may also remediate
some of their language deficits.

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitude of Ohio music educators
toward the teaching of language reading skills. Survey research methods were
employed to obtain the desired data. A 27-item questionnaire meant to quantify
respondents' attitudes and collect pertinent demographic information was created by
the researchers, validated by experts, and pilot tested with a small group of music
teachers. The questionnaire was sent to a sufficiently-sized, random sample of n =
361 music teachers in Ohio. Usable returns were received from 257 teachers,
resulting in a response rate of 71.2%. The attitude of Ohio music teachers toward the
teaching of language reading skills was determined to be favorable, with a mean
attitudinal score of M = 69.6 and standard deviation of s = 11.8. Significant
differences between teachers serving in urban, suburban, and rural schools were
revealed. Significant differences were also discovered between men and women and
between choral music educators and instrumental music educators. Inadequate
training and a lack of instructional time were identified as the primary obstacles that
prevent music teachers from teaching language reading skills in their music classes.

Although certain parallels can be drawn between written language and notation in
music - both use arbitrary visual symbols to notate the salient aspects of a sound
pattern, the purpose of each notational system differs markedly. While the primary
function of written language is to carry referential meaning, the primary function of
musical notation is to carry instructions for the production of a musical performance.
Music reading thus lies at the interface between perception and action and provides
an ecological model with which to study how visual instructions influence the motor
system. The studies presented in this article investigate how musical symbols on the
page are decoded into a musical response, from both a cognitive and neurological
perspective. The results of a musical Stroop paradigm are described, in which
musical notation was present but irrelevant for task performance. The presence of
musical notation produced systematic effects on reaction time, demonstrating that
reading of the written note, as well as the written word, is obligatory for those who
are musically literate. Spatial interference tasks are also described which suggest
that music reading, at least for the pianist, can be characterized as a set of vertical to
horizontal mappings. These behavioural findings are mirrored by the results of an
fMRI training study in which musically untrained adults were taught to read music
and play piano keyboard over a period of three months. Learning-specific changes
were seen in superior parietal cortex and supramarginal gyrus, areas which are
known to be involved in spatial sensorimotor transformations and preparation of
learned actions respectively.

Research suggests that music is beneficial in teaching both social and academic
skills to young children. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a
music therapy program designed to teach reading skills versus the Between the
Lions television program on the early literacy behaviors of Kindergarten children from
a low socioeconomic background. Subjects (n = 86) were children, aged 5-7 years,
enrolled in one of four different Kindergarten classes at a public elementary school in
Northwest Florida. Each class was assigned one of four treatment conditions:
Music-Video (sequential presentation of each condition), Music-Only, Video-Only,
and no contact Control group. Growth in early literacy skills was measured using the
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and 3 subtests of the Test
of Early reading Ability-3rd edition (TERA-3). Teachers' perceptions of classroom
literacy behaviors were measured using a pre and poststudy survey. This study also
compared on- and off-task behavior of students during video versus music
conditions. Results of the 7 subtests measuring early literacy were varied. The
Music/Video and Music-Only, groups achieved the highest increases in mean scores
from pre to posttest on 4 of the 7 subtests. Students in the Video-Only group scored
significantly better on the phonemic segmentation portion of the DIBELS than peers
in the Music/Video condition. Furthermore, strong correlations were found between
the Letter Naming, Initial Sounds Fluency tests, and total raw score of the TERA-3
tests for both pre and posttesting. Additionally, graphic analysis of mean off-task
behavior per session indicated that students were more off-task during both video
conditions (video alone and video portion of Music/Video condition) than during the
music conditions. Off-task behavior was consistently lower during music sessions for
the duration of the study. This study confirmed that music increases the on-task
behavior of students. Additionally, the combination of music and video enrichment
showed gains in 4 of the 8 tests used to measure students' progress. This pattern
supports the need for further investigation regarding benefits of enrichment programs
specifically designed to enhance curricula for students from low socioeconomic
backgrounds, particularly programs that incorporate music activities.

Over the last few decades, a growing amount of research has suggested that
dyslexics have particular difficulties with skills involving accurate or rapid timing,
including musical timing skills. It has been hypothesised that music training may be
able to remediate such timing difficulties, and have a positive effect on fundamental
perceptual skills that are important in the development of language and literacy skills
(Overy, 2000). In order to explore this hypothesis further, the nature and extent of
dyslexics' musical difficulties need to be examined in more detail. In the present
study, a collection of musical aptitude tests NATO were designed specifically for
dyslexic children, in order to distinguish between a variety of musical skills and
sub-skills. 15 dyslexic children (age 7-11, mean age 9.0) and 11 control children (age
7-10, mean age 8.9) were tested on the MATs, and their scores were compared.
Results showed that the dyslexic group scored hi her than the control group on 3
tests of pitch skills (possibly attributable to slightly greater musical experience), but
lower than the control group on 7 out of 9 tests of timing skills. Particular difficulties
were noted on one of the tests involving rapid temporal processing, in which a
subgroup of 5 of the dyslexic children (33%) (mean age 8.4) was found to account
for all the significant error. Also, an interesting correlation was found between
spelling ability and the skill of tapping out the rhythm of a song, which both involve
the skill of syllable segmentation. These results support suggestions that timing is a
difficulty area for dyslexic children, and suggest that rhythm skills and rapid skills
may need particular attention in any form of musical training with dyslexics.
Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

The underlying causes of the language and literacy difficulties experienced by

dyslexic children are not yet fully understood, but current theories suggest that timing
deficits may be a key factor. Dyslexic children have been found to exhibit timing
difficulties in the domains of language, music, perception and cognition, as well as
motor control. The author has previously suggested that group music lessons, based
on singing and rhythm games, might provide a valuable multisensory support tool for
dyslexic children by encouraging the development of important auditory and motor
timing skills and subsequently language skills. In order to examine this hypothesis, a
research program was designed that involved the development of group music
lessons and musical tests for dyslexic children in addition to three experimental
studies. It was found that classroom music lessons had a positive effect on both
phonologic and spelling skills, but not reading skills. Results also indicated that
dyslexic children showed difficulties with musical timing skills while showing no
difficulties with pitch skills. These apparent disassociations between spelling and
reading ability and musical timing and pitch ability are discussed. The results of the
research program are placed in the context of a more general model of the potential
relationship between musical training and improved language and literacy skills.

This study evaluated the effects of music sessions using a curriculum designed to
enhance the prereading and writing skills of 25 children aged 4 to 5 years who were
enrolled in Early Intervention and Exceptional Student Education programs. This
study was a replication of the work of Standley and Hughes (1997) and utilized a
larger sample size (n = 50) in order to evaluate the efficacy of a music curriculum
designed specifically to teach prereading and writing skills versus one that focuses
an all developmental areas. Both the experimental (n = 25) and control (n = 25)
groups received two 30-minute sessions each week for an entire school year for a
minimum of 60 sessions per group. The differentiating factors between the two
groups were the structure and components of the musical activities. The fall sessions
for the experimental group were focused primarily on writing skills while the spring
sessions taught reading/book concepts. Music sessions for the control group were
based purely on the thematic material, as determined by the classroom teacher with
purposeful exclusion of all preliteracy concepts. All participants were pretested at the
beginning of the school year and posttested before the school year ended. Overall,
results demonstrated that music sessions significantly enhanced both groups'
abilities to learn prewriting and print concepts. However, the experimental group
showed significantly higher results on the logo identification posttest and the word
recognition test. Implications for curriculum design and academic and social
applications of music in Early Intervention programs are discussed.
Subjects (N = 27), kindergarten students enrolled in three classes of a public
elementary school, participated in a whole language curriculum. As a complement to
the whole language curriculum, a music program was implemented by a music
therapist. In addition to integrating music activities into the curriculum, the purpose of
this program was to determine the effect of shared reading paired with music on
kindergarten children's reading accuracy. Each of the three classes received a
different shared reading treatment condition: song rehearsal of the text set to music,
spoken and song rehearsal of the text set to music, or spoken rehearsal only the
text. Subjects' readings of ''big books'' were videotaped and analyzed for word
substitutions and omissions to calculate the percentage of text read accurately.
Analysis indicated that both (a) song rehearsal of text set to music and (b) spoken
and song rehearsal of book text set to music facilitated greater text accuracy than (c)
spoken rehearsal only of book text (p < .01).