Music Education Can Help Children Improve Reading Skills

A recent study was done on two US elementary schools. One routinely trained children in music. One did not. The researchers hypothesized that the children receiving the music curriculum would develop a larger vocabulary, and more advanced verbal sequencing. “because neural response to music is a widely distributed system within the brain…. it would not be unreasonable to expect that some processing networks for music and language behaviours, namely reading, located in both hemispheres of the brain would overlap.” Via sciencedaily.com This is not the first study performed in this sort of field. Other studies have shown positive increases in linguistic, mathematical, and spatial skills. This study was taking it a level deeper. It was focused on sub-skills. Vocabulary, and verbal sequencing. This was because they claimed these skills- “Are cornerstone components in the continuum of literacy development and a window into the subsequent successful acquisition of proficient reading and language skills such as decoding and reading comprehension.” Via sciencedaily.com This is how they performed their study. Children in the intervention school (n=46) studied piano formally for a period of three consecutive years as part of a comprehensive instructional intervention program. Children attending the control school (n=57) received no formal musical training on any musical instrument and had never taken music lessons as part of their general school curriculum or in private study. Both schools followed comprehensive balanced literacy programmes that integrate skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. All participants were individually tested to assess their reading skills at the start and close of a standard 10-month school year using the Structure of Intellect (SOI) measure. Via sciencedaily.com The results were very close to what you might expect! At the end of the year, the data showed significantly better vocabulary and verbal sequencing scores when compared to the school without a music curriculum. This supported their push for getting music into more educational environments. However, upon further inspection of the data... there were a few discrepancies. The fact that the music curriculum school's students had already received 2 years of music education was not included in the original study. How was it that these two schools when tested appeared equally proficient at the start of the study? The authors of the study found this very interesting and dove even deeper. They proposed 3 factors to explain the lack of difference between the two schools in the beginning of the study. First, children were tested for their baseline reading skills at the beginning of the school year, after an extended holiday period. Perhaps the absence of any music instruction during a lengthy summer recess may have reversed any earlier temporary cortical reorganization experienced by students in the music group, a finding reported in other related research. Another explanation could be that the duration of music study required to improve reading and associated skills is fairly long, so the initial two years were not sufficient. A third explanation involves the specific developmental time period during which children were receiving the tuition. During the course of [...]

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