Musical rhythm and reading development: does beat processing matter?

Digital rhythm training improves reading fluency in children

Musical instrument training has been linked to improved academic and cognitive abilities in children, but it remains unclear why this occurs. Moreover, access to instrument training is not always feasible, thereby leaving less fortunate children without opportunity to benefit from such training. Although music-based video games may be more accessible to a broader population, research is lacking regarding their benefits on academic and cognitive performance. To address this gap, we assessed a custom-designed, digital rhythm training game as a proxy for instrument training to evaluate its ability to engender benefits in math and reading abilities. Furthermore, we tested for changes in core cognitive functions related to math and reading to inform how rhythm training may facilitate improved academic abilities. Classrooms of 8-9 year old children were randomized to receive either 6 weeks of rhythm training (N = 32) or classroom instruction as usual (control; N = 21). Compared to the control group, results showed that rhythm training improved reading, but not math, fluency. Assessments of cognition showed that rhythm training also led to improved rhythmic timing and language-based executive function (Stroop task), but not sustained attention, inhibitory control, or working memory. Interestingly, only the improvements in rhythmic timing correlated with improvements in reading ability. Together, these results provide novel evidence that a digital platform may serve as a proxy for musical instrument training to facilitate reading fluency in children, and that such reading improvements are related to enhanced rhythmic timing ability and not other cognitive functions associated with reading performance. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Digital rhythm training in the classroom can improve reading fluency in 8-9 year old children Improvements in reading fluency were positively correlated with enhanced rhythmic timing ability Alterations in reading fluency were not predicted by changes in other executive functions that support reading A digital platform may be a convenient and cost-effective means to provide musical rhythm training, which in turn, can facilitate academic skills.

Rhythmic temporal prediction enhances neural representations of movement intention for brain-computer interface

Objective.Detecting movement intention is a typical use of brain-computer interfaces (BCI). However, as an endogenous electroencephalography (EEG) feature, the neural representation of movement is insufficient for improving motor-based BCI. This study aimed to develop a new movement augmentation BCI encoding paradigm by incorporating the cognitive function of rhythmic temporal prediction, and test the feasibility of this new paradigm in optimizing detections of movement intention.Methods.A visual-motion synchronization task was designed with two movement intentions (left vs. right) and three rhythmic temporal prediction conditions (1000 ms vs. 1500 ms vs. no temporal prediction). Behavioural and EEG data of 24 healthy participants were recorded. Event-related potentials (ERPs), event-related spectral perturbation induced by left- and right-finger movements, the common spatial pattern (CSP) and support vector machine, Riemann tangent space algorithm and logistic regression were used and compared across the three temporal prediction conditions, aiming to test the impact of temporal prediction on movement detection.Results.Behavioural results showed significantly smaller deviation time for 1000 ms and 1500 ms conditions. ERP analyses revealed 1000 ms and 1500 ms conditions led to rhythmic oscillations with a time lag in contralateral and ipsilateral areas of movement. Compared with no temporal prediction, 1000 ms condition exhibited greater beta event-related desynchronization (ERD) lateralization in motor area (P< 0.001) and larger beta ERD in frontal area (P< 0.001). 1000 ms condition achieved an averaged left-right decoding accuracy of 89.71% using CSP and 97.30% using Riemann tangent space, both significantly higher than no temporal prediction. Moreover, movement and temporal information can be decoded simultaneously, achieving 88.51% four-classification accuracy.Significance.The results not only confirm the effectiveness of rhythmic temporal prediction in enhancing detection ability of motor-based BCI, but also highlight the dual encodings of movement and temporal information within a single BCI paradigm, which is promising to expand the range of intentions that can be decoded by the BCI.

Which factors modulate spontaneous motor tempo? A systematic review of the literature

Intentionally or not, humans produce rhythmic behaviors (e.g., walking, speaking, and clapping). In 1974, Paul Fraisse defined rhythmic behavior as a periodic movement that obeys a temporal program specific to the subject and that depends less on the conditions of the action (p. 47). Among spontaneous rhythms, the spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) corresponds to the tempo at which someone produces movements in the absence of external stimuli, at the most regular, natural, and pleasant rhythm for him/her. However, intra- and inter-individual differences exist in the SMT values. Even if several factors have been suggested to influence the SMT (e.g., the age of participants), we do not yet know which factors actually modulate the value of the SMT. In this context, the objectives of the present systematic review are (1) to characterize the range of SMT values found in the literature in healthy human adults and (2) to identify all the factors modulating the SMT values in humans. Our results highlight that (1) the reference value of SMT is far from being a common value of 600 ms in healthy human adults, but a range of SMT values exists, and (2) many factors modulate the SMT values. We discuss our results in terms of intrinsic factors (in relation to personal characteristics) and extrinsic factors (in relation to environmental characteristics). Recommendations are proposed to assess the SMT in future research and in rehabilitative, educative, and sport interventions involving rhythmic behaviors.

First school year tapping predicts children's third-grade literacy skills

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.

Identifying the risk of dyslexia in bilingual children: The potential of language-dependent and language-independent tasks

This study investigates the linguistic processing and non-linguistic cognitive abilities of monolingual and bilingual children with and without reading difficulties and examines the relationship between these skills and reading. There were 72 Italian-speaking children: 18 monolingual good readers (MONO-GR, M_age = 10;4), 19 monolingual poor readers (MONO-PR, M_age = 10;3), 21 bilingual good readers (BI-GR, M_age = 10;6), and 16 bilingual poor readers (BI-PR, M_age = 10;6). All bilingual children spoke Italian as their L2. Children completed a battery of standardized Italian reading tests, language-dependent tasks: nonword repetition (NWR), sentence repetition (SR), and phonological awareness (PA), and language-independent tasks: timing anticipation, beat synchronization, inhibition control, auditory reaction time, and rapid automatized naming (RAN). Poor readers scored below good readers on the language-dependent tasks, including NWR, PA, and SR. Beat synchronization was the only language-independent task sensitive to reading ability, with poor readers showing greater variability than good readers in tapping to fast rhythms. SR was the only task influenced by language experience as bilinguals underperformed monolinguals on the task. Moreover, there were weak to moderate correlations between performance on some language-dependent tasks (NWR, PA), language-independent tasks (inhibition control, RAN), and reading measures. Performance on the experimental tasks (except for RAN) was not associated with the length of exposure to Italian. The results highlight the potential of NWR, PA, SR, and beat synchronization tasks in identifying the risk of dyslexia in bilingual populations. Future research is needed to validate these findings and to establish the tasks' diagnostic accuracy.

The relation between rhythm processing and cognitive abilities during child development: The role of prediction

Rhythm and meter are central elements of music. From the very beginning, children are responsive to rhythms and acquire increasingly complex rhythmic skills over the course of development. Previous research has shown that the processing of musical rhythm is not only related to children’s music-specific responses but also to their cognitive abilities outside the domain of music. However, despite a lot of research on that topic, the connections and underlying mechanisms involved in such relation are still unclear in some respects. In this article, we aim at analyzing the relation between rhythmic and cognitive-motor abilities during childhood and at providing a new hypothesis about this relation. We consider whether predictive processing may be involved in the relation between rhythmic and various cognitive abilities and hypothesize that prediction as a cross-domain process is a central mechanism building a bridge between rhythm processing and cognitive-motor abilities. Further empirical studies focusing on rhythm processing and cognitive-motor abilities are needed to precisely investigate the links between rhythmic, predictive, and cognitive processes.

Rhythm but not melody processing helps reading via phonological awareness and phonological memory

Despite abundant evidence that music skills relate to enhanced reading performance, the mechanisms subtending this relation are still under discussion. The Temporal Sampling Framework (TSF) provides a well-defined explanation for the music-reading link: musical rhythm perception would relate to reading because it helps to encode speech units, which, in turn, is fundamental to reading. However, in spite of this clear mediation-based prediction (effect of music skills mediated by the encoding of speech units), the tests made to it so far remain inconclusive, either due to the use of hybrid measures (rhythm perception and production, musical and non-musical rhythm) or to underspecified mediation results (unclear presence of partial mediation). In the present study, we addressed these potential weaknesses of previous studies and investigated whether phonological memory and phonological awareness (proxies of speech encoding abilities) mediate the effects of rhythm perception abilities on reading in late first-graders. To test for the specificity of musical rhythm in this relation, we examined the same hypothesis for melody perception. Results showed full mediation for effects of musical rhythm perception, while melody perception did not even relate to reading. Our findings support the predictions embedded in the TSF and highlight the potential of rhythm-based interventions in early stimulation.

Behavioral and neural rhythm sensitivities predict phonological awareness and word reading development in Chinese

The present study examined both the development of behavioral and electrophysiological rhythm processing and their contribution to phonological awareness and word reading in Chinese. We followed a sample of 47 Mandarin-speaking Chinese children from age 9 (Grade 3) to age 11 (Grade 5). Results showed first a significant improvement over time in behavioral beat perception and in P3as for small beat changes. Second, behavioral and neural beat sensitivities at age 9 predicted phonological awareness (phoneme deletion and tone identification) at age 11 and its development over the two-year span of the study. Neural beat sensitivities at age 9 also explained unique variance in reading accuracy (but not reading fluency) at age 11 and its two-year development. Taken together, these findings suggest that rhythm and Chinese reading-related skills are intricately related. Neural rhythm sensitivities could serve as predictive biomarkers for the development of phonological awareness and reading in Chinese school-age children.

The relationship between entrainment dynamics and reading fluency assessed by sensorimotor perturbation

A consistent relationship has been found between rhythmic processing and reading skills. Impairment of the ability to entrain movements to an auditory rhythm in clinical populations with language-related deficits, such as children with developmental dyslexia, has been found in both behavioral and neural studies. In this study, we explored the relationship between rhythmic entrainment, behavioral synchronization, reading fluency, and reading comprehension in neurotypical English- and Mandarin-speaking adults. First, we examined entrainment stability by asking participants to coordinate taps with an auditory metronome in which unpredictable perturbations were introduced to disrupt entrainment. Next, we assessed behavioral synchronization by asking participants to coordinate taps with the syllables they produced while reading sentences as naturally as possible (tap to syllable task). Finally, we measured reading fluency and reading comprehension for native English and native Mandarin speakers. Stability of entrainment correlated strongly with tap to syllable task performance and with reading fluency, and both findings generalized across English and Mandarin speakers.

Identifying a brain network for musical rhythm: A functional neuroimaging meta-analysis and systematic review

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 30 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies investigating processing of musical rhythms in neurotypical adults. First, we identified a general network for musical rhythm, encompassing all relevant sensory and motor processes (Beat-based, rest baseline, 12 contrasts) which revealed a large network involving auditory and motor regions. This network included the bilateral superior temporal cortices, supplementary motor area (SMA), putamen, and cerebellum. Second, we identified more precise loci for beat-based musical rhythms (Beat-based, audio-motor control, 8 contrasts) in the bilateral putamen. Third, we identified regions modulated by beat based rhythmic complexity (Complexity, 16 contrasts) which included the bilateral SMA-proper/pre-SMA, cerebellum, inferior parietal regions, and right temporal areas. This meta-analysis suggests that musical rhythm is largely represented in a bilateral cortico-subcortical network. Our findings align with existing theoretical frameworks about auditory-motor coupling to a musical beat and provide a foundation for studying how the neural bases of musical rhythm may overlap with other cognitive domains.

Tapping to Music Predicts Literacy Skills of First-Grade Children

The ability to synchronise one's movements to the sound of a regular beat has been found to be associated with children's language and reading abilities. Sensorimotor synchronisation or tapping performance can among other factors [e.g., working memory and rapid automatized naming (RAN)] predict phonological awareness and word reading accuracy and fluency of first graders. While tapping tasks that use a simple metronome sound are more often used, applying musical stimuli has the potential advantage of being more engaging and motivating for children. In the present study, we investigated whether tapping to a metronome beat or complex musical stimuli would predict phonological awareness and reading outcomes of Hungarian 6-7-year olds (N=37). We also measured participants' general cognitive abilities (RAN, non-verbal intelligence and verbal working memory). Our results show that phonological awareness, spelling and reading accuracy were associated with the musical tasks while reading fluency was predicted by the metronome trials. Our findings suggest that complex musical tasks should be considered when investigating this age group, as they were, in general, more effective in predicting literacy outcomes.

Eros, Beauty, and Phon-Aesthetic Judgements of Language Sound. We Like It Flat and Fast, but Not Melodious. Comparing Phonetic and Acoustic Features of 16 European Languages

This article concerns sound aesthetic preferences for European foreign languages. We investigated the phonetic-acoustic dimension of the linguistic aesthetic pleasure to describe the "music" found in European languages. The Romance languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, take a lead when people talk about melodious language - the music-like effects in the language (a.k.a., phonetic chill). On the other end of the melodiousness spectrum are German and Arabic that are often considered sounding harsh and un-attractive. Despite the public interest, limited research has been conducted on the topic of phonaesthetics, i.e., the subfield of phonetics that is concerned with the aesthetic properties of speech sounds (Crystal, 2008). Our goal is to fill the existing research gap by identifying the acoustic features that drive the auditory perception of language sound beauty. What is so music-like in the language that makes people say "it is music in my ears"? We had 45 central European participants listening to 16 auditorily presented European languages and rating each language in terms of 22 binary characteristics (e.g., beautiful - ugly and funny - boring) plus indicating their language familiarities, L2 backgrounds, speaker voice liking, demographics, and musicality levels. Findings revealed that all factors in complex interplay explain a certain percentage of variance: familiarity and expertise in foreign languages, speaker voice characteristics, phonetic complexity, musical acoustic properties, and finally musical expertise of the listener. The most important discovery was the trade-off between speech tempo and so-called linguistic melody (pitch variance): the faster the language, the flatter/more atonal it is in terms of the pitch (speech melody), making it highly appealing acoustically (sounding beautiful and sexy), but not so melodious in a "musical" sense.

Advances in the Neurocognition of Music and Language

Neurocomparative music and language research has seen major advances over the past two decades. The goal of this Special Issue “Advances in the Neurocognition of Music and Language” was to showcase the multiple neural analogies between musical and linguistic information processing, their entwined organization in human perception and cognition and to infer the applicability of the combined knowledge in pedagogy and therapy. Here, we summarize the main insights provided by the contributions and integrate them into current frameworks of rhythm processing, neuronal entrainment, predictive coding and cognitive control.

Rhythm in the blood: The influence of rhythm skills on literacy development in third graders

Several studies have shown the influence of rhythm skills on the processing of written language, especially at the beginning of literacy development. The first objective of this study was to determine the persistence of this link at an advanced grade level. The second objective was to better understand the factors underlying this relationship and, more specifically, to examine the hypothesis of mediation by phonological and/or motor skills. In total, 278 third graders performed literacy tasks (word/pseudoword decoding and spelling), a rhythm production task, two phonological tasks (phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming), and motor tasks. Significant correlations were observed between literacy and each of rhythm skills, phonological skills, and motor skills. However, structural equation models showed that the influence of rhythm skills on literacy was mediated neither by phonological skills nor by motor abilities. These results suggest that rhythm skills continue to play a role in the acquisition of written language in third graders and that this contribution seems to be independent of phonological and motor skills.

Rhythm processing in cochlear implant-mediated music perception

Cochlear implants (CIs) are biomedical devices that provide sound to people with severe-to-profound hearing loss by direct electrical stimulation of auditory neurons in the cochlea. Despite the remarkable achievements with respect to speech perception in quiet environments, music perception with CIs remains generally poor due to the degradation of auditory input. Prior studies have shown that both pitch perception and timbre discrimination are poor in CI users, whereas the performance on rhythmic tasks is nearly equivalent to normal hearing participants. There are several caveats, however, to this generalization regarding rhythm processing for CI users. The purpose of this article is to summarize the literature on rhythmic perception for CI users while highlighting important limitations within these studies. We will also identify areas for future research and development of CI-mediated music processing. It is likely that rhythm processing will continue to advance as our understanding of electrical current delivery to the auditory nerve improves.

Are Temporal and Tonal Musical Skills Related to Phonological Awareness and Literacy Skills? - Evidence From Two Cross-Sectional Studies With Children From Different Age Groups

Temporal and spectral auditory processing abilities are required for efficient and unimpaired processing of speech and might thus be associated with the development of phonological and literacy skills in children. Indeed, studies with unselected children have found links between these basic auditory processing abilities and the development of phonological awareness, reading, and spelling. Additionally, associations between the processing of temporal or spectral/tonal information in music and phonological awareness/literacy have been reported, but findings concerning relations between music processing and spelling are rather sparse. To gain more insights into the specific, potentially age-dependent relevance of various temporal (e.g., rhythm, tempo) and tonal (e.g., pitch, melody) musical subdomains for phonological awareness and literacy, we adapted five music-processing tasks (three temporal, two tonal) for use with tablet computers and used them in two cross-sectional studies with German children from two age groups: Study 1 was conducted with preschool children (about 5 years of age; without formal reading and spelling instruction) and focused on associations between music processing and phonological awareness. In Study 2, third-graders (about 8 years of age) were investigated concerning relations between music processing, phonological awareness, reading comprehension, and spelling. In both studies, rhythm reproduction and pitch perception turned out to be significant predictors of phonological awareness in stepwise regression analyses. Although various associations between music processing and literacy were found for third-graders in Study 2, after phonological awareness was accounted for, only rhythm reproduction made a unique contribution to literacy skills, namely, to alphabetic spelling skills. Hence, both studies indicate that temporal (i.e., rhythm reproduction) and spectral/tonal (i.e., pitch perception) musical skills are distinctly and uniquely related to phonological awareness in children from different age groups (preschool vs. Grade 3). The finding that rhythm reproduction, an auditory temporal processing skill integrating perceptual and motor aspects of rhythm processing, was especially tightly linked to phonological awareness and literacy corroborates other findings on associations between rhythm processing and literacy development and is of interest from the viewpoint of current theories of developmental dyslexia. The potential relevance of our results for applied research concerning early diagnosis and training of literacy-related skills is discussed.

Music and movement: Towards a translational approach

Rhythmic abilities are highly widespread in the general population. Most people can extract the regular beat of music, and align their movements with it. The aim of a translational approach for music and movement is to build on current fundamental research and theories of beat perception and synchronization to devise music-based interventions, which are informed by theory. To illustrate this approach, Parkinson's disease is taken as a model, with a focus on the positive effects of rhythmic auditory cueing on walking. In Parkinson's disease, a relation is found between the success of this music-based intervention and individual differences in rhythmic abilities. Patients with relatively spared rhythmic abilities are the most likely to benefit from cueing. Moreover, rhythmic auditory cueing can be optimized by using mobile technologies (tablets and smartphones), in the form of dedicated apps or serious games. A similar translational approach to the study of music, rhythm, and movement can be extended to remediation of cognitive, speech and language functions in other patient populations, such as children and adults with neurodevelopemental disorders.