Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Institute of Psychology, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Budapest, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2023 Feb 9;13(1):2298. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-29367-5.
Rhythmic skills have been repeatedly found to relate to children's early literacy skills. Using rhythmic tasks to predict language and reading performance seems a promising direction as they can be easily administered early as a screening test to identify at-risk children. In the present study, we measured Hungarian children's (N = 37) general cognitive abilities (working memory, non-verbal reasoning and rapid automatized naming), language and literacy skills (vocabulary, word reading, phonological awareness and spelling) and finger tapping performance in a longitudinal design in the first and third grades. We applied metronome stimuli in three tempi (80, 120, 150 bpm) using a synchronization-continuation paradigm and also measured participants' spontaneous motor tempo. While children's synchronization asynchrony was lower in third than in the first grade, with the exception of the slow-tempo trials, tapping consistency and continuation tapping success showed no development in this period. First-year tapping consistency in the slow-tempo tasks was associated with third-year reading and spelling outcomes. Our results show that the relation between tapping performance and literacy skills persists throughout the third school year, making the sensorimotor synchronization task a potentially effective instrument for predicting literacy outcomes, and a useful tool for early screening of reading difficulties.
节奏技能与儿童早期的读写能力密切相关。使用节奏任务来预测语言和阅读表现似乎是一个很有前途的方向，因为它们可以作为一种简单的筛查测试，在早期用于识别有风险的儿童。在本研究中，我们采用纵向设计，在一年级和三年级测量了 37 名匈牙利儿童的一般认知能力（工作记忆、非言语推理和快速自动命名）、语言和读写能力（词汇、单词阅读、语音意识和拼写）以及手指敲击表现。我们使用节拍器以三种节拍（80、120、150bpm）刺激，并采用同步-连续范式，还测量了参与者的自发运动节拍。虽然与一年级相比，儿童在三年级的同步异步性较低，但除了慢节奏的试验外，在这段时间内，敲击的一致性和连续敲击的成功率并没有提高。在慢节奏任务中，第一年的敲击一致性与第三年的阅读和拼写成绩相关。我们的研究结果表明，敲击表现与读写能力之间的关系在整个第三学年都持续存在，使感觉运动同步任务成为预测读写能力的一个有效工具，也是阅读困难早期筛查的有用工具。
