Partanen Eino, Kivimäki Riia, Huotilainen Minna, Ylinen Sari, Tervaniemi Mari
Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Locopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain (MMBB), Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
Neuropsychologia. 2022 May 3;169:108189. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108189. Epub 2022 Mar 4.
Musical activities have been suggested to be beneficial for language development in childhood. Randomised controlled trials using music have indicated that musical interventions can be used to support language skills in children with developmental language difficulties. However, it is not entirely clear how beneficial music activities are for normally developing children or how the effects mediated via music are transmitted. To investigate these questions, the present study used structural equation models to assess how musical training, perceptual musical skills, and auditory processing in the brain are associated with reading proficiency and each other. Perceptual musical skills were assessed using musicality tests while auditory processing in the brain was measured using mismatch negativity responses to pitch, duration, and phoneme length contrasts. Our participants were a community sample of 64 8-11-year-old typically developing children with and without musical training, recruited from four classes in four elementary schools in Finland. Approximately half of children had music as a hobby. Our results suggest that performance in tests of musical perceptual skills is directly linked with reading proficiency instead of being mediated via auditory processing in the brain. Auditory processing in the brain in itself seems not to be strongly linked with reading proficiency in these children. Our results support the view that musical perceptual skills are associated with reading skills regardless of musical training.
音乐活动已被认为对儿童语言发展有益。使用音乐的随机对照试验表明，音乐干预可用于支持有发育性语言障碍儿童的语言技能。然而，音乐活动对正常发育儿童的益处究竟有多大，以及通过音乐介导的影响是如何传递的，目前尚不完全清楚。为了研究这些问题，本研究使用结构方程模型来评估音乐训练、音乐感知技能和大脑听觉处理如何与阅读能力以及它们彼此之间的关联。使用音乐性测试评估音乐感知技能，同时使用对音高、时长和音素长度对比的失配负波反应来测量大脑的听觉处理。我们的参与者是从芬兰四所小学的四个班级招募的64名8至11岁有或没有音乐训练的典型发育儿童的社区样本。大约一半的儿童将音乐作为爱好。我们的结果表明，音乐感知技能测试中的表现与阅读能力直接相关，而不是通过大脑的听觉处理来介导。在这些儿童中，大脑的听觉处理本身似乎与阅读能力没有紧密联系。我们的结果支持这样一种观点，即无论有无音乐训练，音乐感知技能都与阅读技能相关。
