Does awareness of musical structure relate to general cognitive and literacy profile in children with learning disabilities

Department of Pediatrics, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece pk@med.auth. gr In: C. Tsougras, R. Parncutt (Eds.) Proceedings of the fourth Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM08) Thessaloniki, Greece, 2­6 July 2008, http://web.auth. gr/cim08/ Background in clinical neurology/neuropsychology. In the past few years, increasing interest has been ex­ pressed in the aetiology and neurobiological factors of language and literacy difficulties experienced by children and a great research effort has been devoted to establish explicit classification criteria and effective identification procedures for individuals with learning disabilities (LD). Besides IQ measures, identification procedures usually focus on problems with oral language, writing, arithmetic, verbal memory, subtle motor dysfunction, hemispheric specialization, attention deficits and other emotional and personality disorders. Background in music psychology . Recent research has provided growing evidence that specific problem areas for children with various types of learning disabilities, especially dyslexia, may also affect perceptual, cognitive and motor mechanisms that underlie the processing of aspects of melodic and rhythmic structure in music­related behaviour. Aims. The aim of the present work is to investigate the relation between standardized nationally­normed measures of IQ / literacy skills and sub­skills underlying basic musical tasks in primary school children diagnosed as LD. Our con­ cern in selecting the particular assessed types of music behaviour and designing the response methodology was to outline children’s awareness of musical structure, both through listening and performance tasks, given their limited musical experience. Method. A sample of 21 children with learning disabilities aged between 7­ 12 years was recruited sequentially from the Lab of Developmental Pediatrics (Hippocrates Hospital of Thessaloniki, Greece). All participating children were assessed individually with the use of two standardized and nationally­normed test batteries that screen verbal and non­verbal intelligence, Greek vocabulary and cognitive ability. Besides, a recently revised short version of the Musical Aptitude Tests (Overy et al., 2003) was also given. Results. Calculated significance of differences and effect size between the assessed sample of children and control data revealed the prominence of musical timing skills as an area of particular difficulty for children with learning dis­ abilities. Interestingly, rhythm copying acuity showed relatively strong correlations with the WISC III ­total IQ, the WISC III ­verbal IQ, the WISC III ­similarities and the WISC III ­vocabulary, while melody discrimination sensitivity showed only a moderate correlation with the AthenaTest­memory for shapes. Conclusions . Despite the fact that observed variability of children’s performance among various subtests was rela­ tively large, these significant correlations we observed, are in support of previous findings and imply a potential link between language processing and processing of structural aspects of music, mainly rhythm­related ones.