Individual Differences In Music Discrimination And Their Relation To Reading And Reading-Related Skills In Children

Research suggests that there may be a relationship between music and reading. Some researchers have found that musical rhythm is related to reading in children, while others have found that it is musical pitch and not rhythm that correlates with reading. Prosody is the melodic element of language that encompasses both pitch and rhythm. In the past, these have been studied separately. In the present study, we analyzed pitch and rhythm discrimination skills, phonological awareness, prosody and reading in thirty-nine seven and eight year old children. We predicted that music and reading skills would be related, and that prosody would make unique contributions to reading. We found that when controlling for phonological awareness, it is rhythm and not pitch that predicts reading. Further, prosody explains additional variance in reading beyond that accounted for by rhythm and thus makes a unique contribution to reading