Reuters
British neurologists have found that the dyslexic students were able to accurately recognize and characterize the musical notes heard by them. A test with 33 dyslexic students and 31 normal students has revealed that the dyslexic students are only 20% behind their normal counterparts in characterizing the sequences of musical notes. This identifies a close link between musical ability and reading comprehension among dyslexic students. WALL STREET JOURNAL has more details on this.
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Researchers have
identified a close link between musical ability—specifically, recognizing
rhythmic patterns—and reading comprehension.
British neuroscientists asked 64 children, 33 of whom had been diagnosed as
dyslexic, to listen to three dozen pairs of brief sequences of notes. Sometimes
the metrical pattern was identical, other times one note was slightly lengthened
in one of the examples. (All the notes were the same pitch.) The dyslexic
students—they were 10 years old, on average—correctly characterized the
sequences as the same or different 63% of the time, compared with 83% for a
control group of students of the same age.
(There was a second control group, made up of younger kids who read about as
well as the dyslexics. They performed about as well as them, too, on the musical
test.)
An inability to recognize rhythmic patterns strongly predicted reading level:
Among the children, scores on the music test accounted for 42% of the variation
in reading ability. It also strongly predicted other shortfalls in “phonological
awareness,” such as the inability to recognize that “Jack” doesn’t rhyme with
“gap” or “nap.”
The rhythmic nature of speech is masked in ordinary speech, but readily
apparent in poetry and nursery rhymes (underscoring the importance of those
genres for young readers, the researchers said). The neuroscientists are working
on follow-up studies exploring whether music instruction improves the reading
performance of dyslexic students, or, indeed, all students.
“Music, Rhythm, Rise Time Perception and Developmental Dyslexia:
Perception of Musical Meter Predicts Reading and Phonology,” Martina Huss,
John P. Verney, Tim Fosker, Natasha Mead and Usha Goswami, Cortex (June)
by Christopher Shea, Wall Street Journal
and Judy Hanning, Learning Link Technologies
