Music Research with Young Children and Infants

Music and Reading

Music and Cognitive Achievement in Children, MuSICA Volume 1, Issue 2, Fall 1994

Music is widely believed to have many benefits for children beyond those within the realm of music itself. These benefits are thought to contribute importantly to development by improving intellectual, motor, and social abilities and skills. This article reviews part of this topic, specifically the relationship between music education and cognitive achievement. The following research summaries includes reviews of some of the studies discussed in the MuSICA article.

Hurwitz I., Wolff, P.H.. Bortnick, B.D., and Kokas, K. (1975). Nonmusical Effects of the Kodaly Music Curriculum in Primary Grade Children. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 8, 45-51.

First grade students were given music instruction for 7 months, 40 minutes a day, for 5 days a week. Instruction involved Kodaly training using folk songs with an emphasis on melodic and rhythmic elements. Testing revealed that the music group exhibited significantly higher reading scores than a control group, scoring in the 88th percentile versus the 72nd percentile.

Lamb, S.J., and Gregory, A.H. (1993). The Relationship Between Music and Reading in Beginning Readers. Educational Psychology, 13, 19-26.

This study explored the relationship between musical sound discrimination and reading ability in first grade children. The research found a high degree of correlation between how well children could read both standard and phonic material and how well they could discriminate pitch. This supports the conclusion that good pitch discrimination benefits learning to read by enhancing the second, phonemic stage of learning. Pitch change of verbal word components (formants) is thought to be the most important factor in conveying word information.

Frith's Three Stages of Reading

1. Visual Recognition of words
2. Learning correspondences between visual parts of words (graphemes) and their spoken sounds (phonemes)
3. Achieving visual recognition or words without going through the earlier stages

Music facilitates reading by improving the second, phonemic stage

Colwell, C.M. Therapeutic Application of Music in the Whole Language Kindergarten. Journal of Music Therapy, 1994, v. 31, 238-247.

The study examined the effect on reading accuracy of 3 methods of shared reading paired with music. 27 kindergartners participated in a music program, supplementing their whole language curriculum. One class had song rehearsal of their textbook set to music. The 2nd had spoken text and song rehearsal. The 3rd had only spoken text rehearsal. Subjects' subsequent text readings were analyzed for word substitutions and omissions. The 1st two classes had greater reading accuracy than the 3rd, suggesting that song rehearsal facilitated reading accuracy by serving as a structural prompt, supporting previous findings that music can facilitate recall and retention.

Music, Learning and Creativity

Mohanty, B. and Hejmadi, A. (1992). Effects of Intervention Training on Some Cognitive Abilities of Preschool Children. Psychological Studies, 37, 31-37.

Mohanty and Hejmadi investigated the effects of various types of training of 4- and 5-year olds on learning the names of their body parts and on creativity as assessed by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, involving picture construction and picture completion. There were four matched groups: non-training control, verbal instruction in the names and uses of body parts, verbal instructions plus acting out movements, and the music/dance group in which instructions were given by song and acting out movements was done in the form of a dance. After twenty days of training, all experimental groups exhibited higher test scores than the control group. The music/dance group showed the greatest improvement in both learning about body parts and tests of creativity. Thus, improvement in cognitive abilities can result from a variety of training experiences but music is the most effective of these treatments.

Some of What We Know about Music and Infants!

Trehub, S.E., Unyk, A.M.; and Trainor, L.J. Maternal Singing in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Infant Behavior and Development, 1993, 16, 285-295.

Mothers (of North American and of Indian descent) were recorded as they informally sang a song of their choice, once to their infant and once in the infant's absence. Adult listeners were required to identify the infant-directed songs. Findings document a distinctive style of singing to infants, some aspects of which are recognizable across cultures and musical systems.

Balaban M.T., Anderson, L.M., Wisniewewski, A.B. (1998). Lateral Asymmetries in Infant Melody Perception. Developmental Psychology, 34:39-48.

Adults show cerebral lateralization for processing contour, the pattern of rising and falling pitches in a melody the right hemisphere detects changes in contour while the left hemisphere notices the preservation of contour when the same pattern is repeated in another key. To determine the developmental stage at which contour processing is lateralized, 8-9 month old infants learned to respond to melody changes by turning their heads to see an animated toy. Their pattern of responses was the same as adults, indicating that brain specializations for the processing of musical contour are present at a very early age.

Howe, M.J., Davidson, J.W., Moore, D.G., and Sloboda, J.A. (1995). Are There Early Childhood Signs of Musical Ability? Psychology of Music, Vol 23, 162-176.

Parents of 257 children who had all studied a musical instrument but who differed in the extent of their mastery were interviewed in order to investigate the claim that unusual musical expertise is often preceded by early signs in the form of spontaneous musical behaviors. Of the possible early signs that were investigated, only one, singing by the child, was observed at an earlier age in those children who later became the most accomplished young musicians than in the other children. Four other early signs examined did not show significant difference between the most and least competent musicians. The age at which parent and child first listened to music together tended to be lower for the most successful children, and these were more likely than the others to have had a keyboard instrument in their home from an early age.