Rhythmic Music Training's Effect on Syntactic Structure Processing among Malay Adolescents with Syntactic Specific Language Impairment.

BACKGROUND

Adolescents with syntactic specific language impairment (S-SLI) fail to comprehend object questions. We hypothesised that rhythmic music training is more effective in treating this condition than conventional methods because music is often perceived as having a clear, isochronous beat or pulse. Thus, this study aims to investigate the effects of rhythmic music training on the syntactic structure processing of Malay questions among native adolescents.

METHODS

In this research study, the participants were three groups of Malay adolescents aged 13 years old-15 years old: i) adolescents with S-SLI with music training, ii) adolescents with S-SLI without music training and iii) typically developing adolescents. Before and after music training, the participants were given a sentence-picture matching task. Accuracy measures and reaction times were captured using E-Prime 2.0.

RESULTS

The results indicated that with music training, the accuracy and reaction time associated with object questions among the two SLI groups were significantly higher and lower, respectively.

CONCLUSION

The implications of using rhythmic music training in enhancing syntactic structure processing are also discussed.