Reading and spelling performance was tested with the Salzburger Lese- und Rechtschreibtest (SLRT; Landerl, Wimmer, & Moser, 1997). The SLRT is an individually given test assessing reading accuracy and reading speed for three word and two non-word reading subtests as well as spelling performance with regard to different types of spelling errors. Musical education has a beneficial effect on higher cognitive functions, but questions arise whether associations between music lessons and cognitive abilities are specific to a domain or general. Active music performance relies on a demanding action-perception-loop calling for long periods of focused attention on dynamic visual, auditory, and motor signals. Given this extra training of high-level cognitive skills in children who learn to play an instrument, it can be asked whether making music enhances children’s performance in domains other than music.
Moreover, there seems to be a link between musical training and language abilities since musical training in childhood influences the development of auditory processing in the cortex (Fujioka, Ross, Kakigi, Pantev, & Trainor, 2006; Moreno & Besson, 2006). There is evidence that musical training is linked to language related aspects such as pitch processing (Moreno et al., 2009; Schön, Magne, & Besson, 2004; Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees, & Kraus, 2007), speech prosody (Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2004), verbal memory (Chan, Ho, & Cheung, 1998; Ho, Cheung, & Chan, 2003; Jakobson, Cuddy, & Kilgour, 2003; Kilgour, Jakobson, & Cuddy, 2000). Additionally, musical aptitude was found to correlate with second language acquisition (Slevc & Miyake, 2006). Furthermore, associations of musical training and reading performance have been demonstrated in a normal population (Barwick, Valentine, West, & Wilding, 1989; Butzlaff, 2000; Lamb & Gregory, 1993) as well as in dyslexics (Overy, 2003).
It is no longer the question whether or not musical training is associated with higher cognitive abilities, because there is growing evidence that it is. An unresolved issue however, is the nature and specificity of the link (Schellenberg & Peretz, 2008). It has been proposed that all specific relations observed so far can be explained by a carry-over effect of the relation between musical training and general abilities as measured by IQ (Schellenberg & Peretz, 2008). Indeed, such a dependency was always found in Schellenberg’s studies. Most of the previous studies showing a relation between musical training and specific abilities, such as language performance, did not measure general abilities. Therefore these studies could not report on the dependency of both.
However, no differences were found in a prospective study investigating 6- year old children between a group of 16 control children and 15 children who had weekly private keyboard lessons for 15 months (Hyde et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the authors were able to show near-transfer effects (motor and auditory skills) as well as structural brain changes for the keyboard group.
Lastly, parents were asked if any family member is playing an instrument. We expect that boys who play an instrument differ from boys that do not play an instrument. The existence of family members who play instruments allows to control for any unspecific differences, such as the family value of playing an instrument, or the minimum family income to allow for financing an instrument and lessons.
SOURCE: Katrin Hille, 1 Kilian Gust, 1 Urlich Bitz, 1 and Thomas Kammer 2 Advances in Cognitive Psychology (2011)
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