The effects of training in rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness in four- to six-year-old children

Abstract

Music training is frequently used for enhancing phonological awareness. The disentanglement of the influences of basic music essentials on phonological awareness could contribute to the measurement of their effectiveness. Therefore, this study investigated the separate effects of training in rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness. Preschoolers aged between four and six years (M = 5.5 years; SD = 0.7 years; 25 boys, 15 girls) were randomly assigned to a music training condition and a non-music training condition. Children in the music condition either participated in a rhythm program or in a pitch program, whereas children in the non-music control condition attended a sports program. All groups were trained three times a week for 20 minutes per session over a period of 16 weeks. Phonological awareness was tested before and after the training phase. At the pretest, no significant differences were found between the three groups. After the training phase, only the pitch program showed a positive effect on phonological awareness concerning rhyming, blending, and segmenting. Thus, these findings can be used to rearrange music training programs to contain more pitch elements in order to increase their effectiveness in enhancing phonological awareness.

Keywords

rhythm training pitch training children phonological awareness music

The benefits of music are wide-ranging (Miendlarzewska & Trost, 2014). Beyond music-related abilities, music is increasingly being seen as useful for enhancing language-related abilities (e.g., vocabulary: Moreno, et al., 2011; reading: Moreno, et al., 2009). In particular, music training promotes phonological awareness (Degé & Schwarzer, 2011; Gromko, 2005), which is an important and reliable predictor of later reading and writing ability (e.g., Küspert & Schneider, 2003). This ability describes the understanding, detection, and manipulation of a language at the level of words and phonemes. Regarding the word level, phonological awareness comprises the rhyming of words, blending, segmentation of chunks within words, and the isolation of individual words from the speech flow. On the phonemic level, this ability refers to the smallest sound units within words (phonemes), and describes the detection and manipulation of these individual sound units. The development of phonological awareness starts as an implicit process until children learn the alphabet. With the knowledge of letters, phonemes become audio-visual and explicit processes, thus phonological awareness increases automatically (Marx, 2007; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). The acquisition and advancement of phonological awareness is an important basis for reading and writing processes, especially for preschoolers before starting primary school (Marx, 2007). For this reason, the enhancement of phonological awareness has become an important issue. Next to well-established language programs that target phonological awareness (e.g., Küspert & Schneider, 2003; Plume & Schneider, 2004), the potential influence of music training on phonological awareness has also been investigated.

Music and phonological awareness

Music and language both consist of auditory stimuli, are generically structured, and deliver messages (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983). In addition, music and language show a clear overlap in their cortical and subcortical neural substrates (Koelsch & Siebel, 2005; Schön et al., 2010) suggesting shared neural resources (Patel, 2011, 2014; White-Schwoch, Carr, Anderson, Strait, & Kraus, 2013). Due to these similarities, researchers have started investigating the association between music and language with respect to the effects of music training on phonological awareness skills (Bolduc, 2009; Chobert, François, Velay & Besson, 2014; François, Chobert, Besson, & Schön, 2013; Gromko, 2005; Moritz, Yampolsky, Papadelis, Thomson, & Wolf, 2013). Studies showed that daily training resulted in improvements in a wide range of phonological skills (Moritz, et al., 2013), that music training specifically designed to train phonological awareness is more effective than regular music training (Bolduc, 2009), and that phonological skills were enhanced in children attending kindergarteners who received music training compared to an untrained control group (Gromko, 2005).

Although these studies point to a causal relationship between music training and phonological awareness, it is not possible to interpret the results with complete certainty because of a lack of control groups (Bolduc, 2009; Moritz et al., 2013), or the use of pseudo-random assignment (Gromko, 2005). Degé and Schwarzer (2011) tested the effect of a music program on phonological awareness by randomly assigning five- to six-year-old preschoolers to a music program, a phonological skills program, or a sports control group. The music program was based on a well-established program for early music education (Nykrin, Grüner, & Widmer, 2007), and contained joint singing and drumming, as well as rhythmic exercises with percussion instruments. The phonological skills program was a well-established program specifically designed to train phonological awareness (Küspert & Schneider, 2003). The sports program was based on Yoga and Active Games for Kids from Dunemann-Gulde (2005). Preschoolers were trained in small groups for ten minutes every day for a period of 20 weeks. Phonological awareness was assessed before and after the training phase. The results indicated that the music program had a positive effect on phonological awareness in preschoolers. Specifically, phonological awareness on the word level improved significantly, whereas phonological awareness on the phonemic level did not show such an improvement. More recently, Patscheke, Degé, and Schwarzer (2016) replicated the study from Degé and Schwarzer (2011) with 4 to 6 year old children of immigrant families. The results of this study supported the results of Degé and Schwarzer (2011), and extended their findings to this special target group. A current meta-analysis from Gordon, Fehd, and McCandliss (2015) dealt with the issue of whether music training enhance literacy skills, including phonological awareness. They included 13 studies (out of 901) that met the criteria of including control groups, pre-post measures, and reading instruction being held constant across groups. Their results confirmed that music training promotes phonological skills.

The contribution of musical essentials to the enhancement of phonological awareness

This highly interesting result raises a further issue: the effectiveness of particular basic music essentials in enhancing phonological awareness. A more detailed view on the impact of these basic music essentials on phonological awareness could make it possible to rearrange existing music training programs for increased effectiveness in enhancing phonological awareness. However, music is multi-dimensional and usually involves several elements like rhythm, melody, meter, and tonality. Therefore, an isolated examination of particular musical elements and their impact on phonological awareness may prove to be difficult and would lead away from naturalistic music. However, focusing on rhythm and pitch would allow for a rough division of basic music essentials because both produce sounds and can easily be extracted from a musical composition.

Musical rhythm includes metric regularity, accents, rhythmic patterning, and grouping of sound events (Tighe & Dowling, 1993). Metrical structure refers to the periodic events of strong and weak beats of a piece, whereas grouping expresses a hierarchical segmentation of a piece with recursive groups, and each group must be composed of contiguous elements (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983). Rhythm perception is relatively stable in 4- to 12-year-old children regarding the ability to detect changes in rhythmic patterns (Drake, Jones, & Baruch, 2000). However, there is a shift from figural perception of rhythm to metric perception between 6 and 12 years of age (Bamberger, 2013; Smith, Cuddy, & Upitis, 1994), and children improve their ability to perceive metric regularity within rhythmic patterns. Children aged 4 can synchronize with a given beat as well as reproduce a simple beat, and there are no developmental differences between 5- and 12-year-olds (Drake et al., 2000; Drake & Gérard, 1989).

Pitch is the most common dimension for creating an organized system of musical events (Patel, 2008). The succession of pitches must contain coherence in order to be defined as a melody (Randel, 1978). In this regard, pitches express harmonic and melodic tension and relaxation, as well as continuity and progression in a piece (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983). While, melody perception develops during infancy (Corrigall & Schellenberg, 2016; Trehub, Thorpe & Morrongiello, 1987), children learn to reproduce simple songs later, typically between three and seven years of age. In this age range, young children learn to combine songs and song fragments, and their pitch broadens up to one octave (Davidson, 1994). On this basis, complex musical abilities (e.g., the integration of changes in pitch and rhythm at the same time) develop during kindergarten and primary school (McPherson, 2016; Paananen, 2007), and no explicit musical education is necessary for this development.

Rhythm

The theoretical framework from Tierney and Kraus (2014) points toward acoustic rhythmic features that might play a key role in music and language transfer effects. Tierney and Kraus (2014) postulate the “precise auditory timing hypothesis” (PATH). They assume that music and language rely on extremely subtle timing details in sounds. They point out that the ability to entrain (i.e., precisely timed joint action) is the core mechanism of both. Music training requires entrainment, which in turn calls for precise perception of acoustic event timing. Thus, music training might promote timing precision that improves speech sound perception, which is important for phonological skills. Growing evidence converges on the idea that rhythm has a temporal organizational role in perceiving music and language, and is crucial for the development of literacy skills (Tierney & Kraus, 2013; Woodruff Carr, White-Schwock, Tierney, Strait & Kraus, 2014). In music, rhythm provides a temporal organizational structure that allows the perception of musical events as regular patterns. In language, rhythm organizes syllables, words, and clausal boundaries. Correlational studies between metrical skills and phonological skills suggest that an accurate perception of metrical structure may be critical for phonological development (Anvari, Trainor, Woodside & Levy, 2002; David, Wade-Woolley, Kirby, & Smithrim, 2007; Holliman, Wood, & Sheehy, 2010).

A similar approach is used in the “temporal sampling theory” of Goswami (2011). Originally, Goswami’s (2011) framework was created for children with developmental dyslexia. But she also noted that this theory had implications for both language development and for the perception of music. Here, the decoding of music and language is linked to the perception of accent and beat. The ability to hear the onset of these accents is critical for decoding the structure in speech and rhythm. In particular, rise times are crucial events in the speech signal and work as a cue to the perception of syllable stress in language, and also to rhythmic timing in music. Similarly, Moritz and colleagues (2013) as well as Verney (2009) argue that rhythm ability involves perception and manipulation of time intervals between musical sounds and between speech sounds, particularly between phonemes. Thus, rhythm exercises may foster the comprehension of rhymes, the segmentation of words, and the manipulation of phonemes. Moritz and colleagues (2013) argue that if rhythm sensitivity is crucial for the development of phonological skills, difficulties in rhythm sensitivity should be associated with poor phonological abilities. In fact, studies show that reading-disabled children have problems with rhythmic sensitivity (e.g., the detection or reproduction of rhythmic patterns) compared to normally developing readers (Wolff, 2002; Witton, et al., 1998). Several studies have shown that children with dyslexia perform poorly in segmentation and grouping, both in music and speech (Overy, Nicolson, Fawcett, & Clarke, 2003; Petkov, O’Connor, Benmoshe, Baynes, & Sutter, 2005; Thomson & Goswami, 2008). Huss and colleagues (2010) found that individual differences in auditory perception from both typically developing children and children with developmental dyslexia (all aged between 8 and 13 years) were linked to musical metrical sensitivity. This, in turn, predicted phonological awareness and accounted for 28% of unique variance, after controlling for IQ. Flaugnacco and colleagues (2014) even suggest that music training focused on rhythm could be beneficial for children with dyslexia, or for children considered to be at risk based on phonological awareness. Furthermore, Verney (2009) found that training in rhythmic activities led to increased phonological awareness, especially rhymes and syllable awareness. However, he also found that music listening and production gave the same effect. One experimental group was given a program of music games and songs. The second experimental group was given a matched program of games and “rhythmic speech” without singing or musical accompaniment. The third group acted as a control and received no training. His intervention study ran for seven weeks and included four and five-year-old children. The results suggest that beyond rhythm, pitch (in terms of singing) is also important for facilitating phonological skills. Thus, pitch could also work as a basic music essential in enhancing phonological awareness.

Pitch

The “shared sound category learning mechanism hypothesis” (SSCLMH) of Patel (2008) argues for pitch in terms of singing as a potential underlying mechanism of music and language. Patel (2008) claims that the categorical building blocks of music, e.g., notes (which correspond to pitches), are related to the categorical building blocks of language, e.g., phonemes. The influence of music training on language, especially on phonological awareness, can therefore be attributed to the sharpening of an underlying domain-general sound-learning mechanism. Herrera, Lorenzo, Defior, Fernandez-Smitz and Costa-Giomi (2011) tested 97 four-year-old preschoolers receiving phonological training with or without music (experimental groups), or receiving no specialized training (control group) in a two-year pretest/post-test study. They found that phonological training both with and without music was effective in improving phonological awareness skills and naming speed compared to the control group. Furthermore, the phonological training with music was based on children’s rhymes and songs, and was particularly effective for the development of phonological awareness of ending sounds, namely rhyming, compared to phonological training without singing. Trehub and Trainor (1998) argue that music for children is like infant-directed speech because it is simple, and consists of repeated pitch contours. Happy vocalizations play an important role in regulating infant attention (Corbeil, Trehub, & Peretz, 2013). Singing makes children aware of the individual sounds in speech because songs consist of lyrics, words, and syllables that are lengthened, repeated, and stressed (Fisher & McDonald, 2001). Thus, songs provide a unique and valuable form of access to phonemes, the smallest sound-unit of language. Indeed, a study by Bryant, Bradley, Maclean, and Crossland (1989) confirms this argument. This longitudinal study tested three-year-old children by comparing their phonological sensitivity to their knowledge of nursery rhymes. They found a strong relation between children’s early knowledge of nursery rhymes and their phonological sensitivity over the next three years. Clément and colleagues (2015) found that children aged between 8 and 12 years with Specific Language Impairment show impairments in singing abilities compared to same aged children with Typical Language Development (Clément, Planchou, Béland, Motte, & Samson, 2015).

In addition to Patel’s hypothesis (SSCLMH: Patel, 2008), McMullen and Saffran (2004) have also put forward a domain-general learning mechanism for language and music. Based on data relating to the ontogeny of language and music in human infants, they concluded that both domains rely on the same learning mechanisms, namely, the extraction of an abstract set of rules through statistical learning, in order to form “native” sound categories (e.g., Saffran, 2003). In music, the succession of pitches is related to all tonal aspects like harmonic and melodic tension and relaxation. Here, the decline in pitch as well as a lengthening of the final note often mark the end of verse and chorus components in songs (Rautenberg, 2015). In language, pitch is more related to intonation, and the ends of clauses are marked by syllable lengthening and a drop in pitch (Rautenberg, 2015).

Objectives

On the one hand, rhythm exercises could foster the comprehension of rhymes or the segmentation of words thanks to precise perception of acoustic rhythmic features. On the other hand, pitches could promote general auditory sensitivity, and thus phonological discrimination, because of an underlying domain-general sound-learning mechanism. Therefore, research is needed to disentangle the effects of rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness in children. A rhythm-focused training program should avoid everything related to pitch perception and reproduction, as well as melodies. At the same time, a pitch-focused training program should allow for overlaps with rhythm only when absolutely necessary (e.g., in strict time joint singing). To the best of our knowledge, no study has thus far addressed this problem. Thus, our study was aimed at investigating the effects of training in rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness in preschoolers. The training programs were appropriate for the stage of music development of 4 to 6 year-old children. We expected positive effects especially for phonological awareness on the word level, because previous findings from Degé and Schwarzer (2011) showed that music had an impact on phonological awareness of large phonological units. Children were randomly assigned to experimental groups that either participated in a rhythm program or in a pitch program, or to a control group that attended a sports program. The effects of the rhythm program and the pitch program were compared with the sports program to control for the effects of retesting, maturation, and extra attention (e.g., Hawthorne effect). Randomized group assignment was used to control for systematic differences between the groups. Phonological awareness was tested prior to the beginning of the training and after the training phase was completed. Thus, it was possible to establish a specific causal relationship between training in rhythm or pitch, and phonological awareness in the experimental groups.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited from kindergartens in Germany. The sample comprised 40 preschoolers (25 boys, 15 girls), with an age range from 4.2 years to 6.3 years (M = 5.5 years; SD = 0.7 years). For detailed information about the sample and the dropout, see Supplementary materials online.

Information about music experience, education, and monthly income were reported by the parents (measures are described below). Regarding music experience, 60% of the children had no music experience, 25% had some music experience (early music education, private music lessons), and the parents of the last 15% did not reply to this question. Regarding parental music education, for 73% of children neither parent had music experience (e.g., playing an instrument), for 10% one parent had music experience, for 5% both parents had music experience, and the remaining 11% of parents did not provide details about their music experience. The educational background information revealed that for 55% of the children neither parent had a university degree, 10% had one parent with a university degree, 20% had both parents with a university degree, and the remaining 15% of parents did not reply to this question. The monthly income range of the families was between “below 1,000 Euros” and “more than 3,000 Euros”, with 15% having an income below 1,000 Euros, 28% families having an income between 1,000 Euros and 2,000 Euros, 10% between 2,000 Euros and 3,000 Euros, 20% of the families having an income of more than 3,000 Euros, and 26% did not provide details about their monthly income.

Material

Training programs

Trained research assistants implemented all three programs (pitch, rhythm, sports). Research assistants met weekly to go over the manual-based programs created by the authors, in terms of detailed schedules of training tasks in order to ensure treatment fidelity. This process was supervised, with a lot of attention paid to compliance regarding correct order and execution of tasks, as well as continuous assessment of the training sessions for all three groups. A typical training session for the children comprised a short welcome (small talk, attendance check), and three to four different tasks of approximately 15 minutes in duration.

The manual for the rhythm program focused on rhythmic exercises, meter execution, perception and imitation of rhythmic sounds taken from the music program used by Degé and Schwarzer (2011), and contained no singing or musical accompaniment. The rhythmic exercises consisted of joint drumming activities with different percussion instruments. Meter execution included synchronization of particular body movements to a given beat, to feel the rhythm and the meter with the whole body, and dancing to certain rhythms while playing a percussion instrument. The perception and imitation tasks contained spoken nursery rhymes that were accompanied with rhythmic sounds (e.g., tabors, claves, clapping hands), and a combination of complex rhythmic sequences combined with spoken syllables (e.g., ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-tatate).

The manual for the pitch program was arranged by focusing on singing parts, intonation tasks, pitch perception, and listening exercises taken from the music program used by Degé and Schwarzer (2011). Singing parts contained mainly joint singing of songs and rhymes for children. Intonation tasks comprised reproduction of tone sequences and intervals. Pitch perception included discrimination and reproduction of high and low tones, discrimination of different pitch intervals, pitch sequences, and identifying whether a tone is played alone or together with one or two other tones. Listening exercises were presented using a CD player and included identifying animal calls, listening to an orchestra, and detecting which instruments are playing.

Though both programs focused on particular basic music essentials, naturally there was some overlap. On the one hand, the rhythm program contained intonation in terms of prosody because rhyming syllables as well as the reproduction of rhythmic sounds are connected with prosodic features (McMullen & Saffran, 2004). On the other hand, the pitch program consisted of rhythmic elements, because there is no melody without rhythm, and melodic contour is based on metrical and grouping structures (Tighe & Dowling, 1993). Nevertheless, overlap was reduced to the essential minimum to maintain the natural qualities of music.

The manual for the sports program was compiled by Degé and Schwarzer (2011) and contained exercises to support motor skills and body coordination by training balance, physical strength, endurance, body perception, and relaxation. It was based on Yoga and active games for kids by Dunemann-Gulde (2005). See Supplementary materials online for more detailed descriptions of each of the three programs.

Measures

Phonological awareness was assessed as a dependent variable with the Test für phonologische Bewusstheitsfähigkeiten (TPB; Fricke & Schäfer, 2011). The test consists of an active vocabulary task and seven (out of eleven) subtests: (1) segmentation of words into syllables, (2) detection of rhymes, (3) production of rhymes, (4 and 5) synthesis of onset phonemes and words, and (6 and 7) onset phoneme recognition in words. Each subtest consisted of three practice items and twelve test items. The test procedure takes approximately 40 minutes and is assessed individually.

A total composite score of all subtest scores was calculated. In 6 out of 7 subtests a maximum of 12 points was possible, resulting in a maximum composite score of 72 points for those subtests. In subtest 3 every correct rhyme word counts as a point, with no upper limit. In addition, the following two composite scores were calculated: a phonological awareness score for large phonological units (words), consisting of scores from subtests 1, 2, and 3, as well as a phonological awareness score for small phonological units (phonemes), consisting of the scores from subtest 4 through 7. Therefore, the maximum score for large phonological units consisted of 24 points plus the points from subtest 3, and for small phonological units, 48 points.

The control variables included gender, age, parental education, family income, and the musical experience of the children and parents (assessed with a questionnaire). Parental monthly income and education were coded as categorical variables. The children’s music experience was measured in months of participation in music programs or training. Parents’ music experience was coded as 0 representing “no music experience”, 1 for “one parent has music experience” (e.g., playing an instrument, vocal training, etc.), and 2 for “both parents have music experience”.

Intelligence was measured with the Culture Fair Test (CFT 1: Weiss & Osterland, 1997), which measures fluid intelligence. The test consisted of five subtests (substitution, mazes, classification, similarities, and matrices), and was administered in groups that did not exceed eight children in accordance with the manual.

Children’s enjoyment during the training was assessed in order to control for potential biases regarding their commitment and willingness. The measure was a 5-point smiley scale that was used at the end of every week during the training phase. Children were asked how much they enjoyed the training and had to point at one smiley. The smiley scale ranged from 1 = not a bit, to 5 = very much. The smiley in the middle expressed no feelings. For statistical purposes, the smiley points were summed up and divided by the number of training weeks to generate an average score for every child.

Procedure

Information sheets about the study, informed consent forms, and the questionnaire to collect information on gender, age, education, income, and music experiences were handed out to the parents of the children. Next, the pretests containing an intelligence test and a phonological awareness test were performed either on consecutive days, or on the same day with adequate breaks in between. After the pretests, children were randomly assigned to a pitch program, a rhythm program, or a sports program. All groups contained four to seven children who were trained at their kindergartens in a separate and undisturbed room. Each training session lasted for 20 minutes. Training took place 3 times a week, for a period of 16 weeks. Immediately after the training phase, a post-test was conducted for the assessment of phonological awareness.

Results

SPSS Version 21 was used for statistical analyses.

Control variables

In addition to randomization, all groups were compared in terms of the control variables (see Tables 1 and Table 2). The ratio of males to females seemed unequally distributed in the sports group compared to the other groups. However, regarding the inferential statistics, the gender ratio was not significantly different between the three groups (see Table 2).

Table 1.

Means and standard deviations for the control variables, including number of males and females in each training group.

Variables	Programs
Variables	Pitch M (SD)	Rhythm M (SD)	Sports M (SD)
Gender	7f / 6m	5f / 8m	3f / 11m
Age*	63.54 (8.13)	67.62 (6.41)	67.21 (4.41)
IQ	94.15 (19.54)	87.46 (14.47)	100.43 (11.66)
Enjoyment of training	3.86 (0.7)	4.33 (0.66)	4.32 (0.62)
Children’s music experience*	6.75 (12.41)	1.09 (3.62)	14.91 (22.04)

in months.

Table 2.

Inferential statistics for group comparisons (pitch, rhythm, sports) in terms of control variables.

Variable	df	Statistical value	p
Age	2, 37	F = 1.592	.217
IQ	2, 37	F = 2.367	.108
Enjoyment of training	2, 37	F = 1.939	.158
Children’s Music experience	2, 31	F = 2.463	.102
Parents’ Music experience	2, n = 35	χ² =1.186	.553
Parental education	2, n = 34	χ² = 2.652	.266
Family income	2, n = 29	χ² = 4.548	.603
Gender	2, n = 40	χ² = 3.030	.220

Phonological awareness

Phonological awareness scores were tested with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, indicating that all variables were normally distributed (p > .132).

At the pretest, the three groups did not differ significantly in phonological awareness, F(2, 37) = 1.298, p = .285. Furthermore, the composite score for large phonological units did not reveal group differences, F(2, 37) = 0.801, p = .457, and neither did the composite score for small phonological units, F(2, 37) = 1.777, p = .183. See Table 3 for means and standard deviations.

Table 3.

Means and standard deviations for the phonological awareness scores at pretest and post-test.

Phonological awareness	Programs
Phonological awareness	Pitch M (SD)	Rhythm M (SD)	Sports M (SD)
Pretest
Total score	48.15 (22.16)	36.38 (18.30)	39.50 (17.35)
Large units	25.46 (13.48)	19.38 (11.7)	22.50 (11.51)
Small units	22.69 (11.32)	17.0 (8.12)	17.0 (6.96)
Post-test
Total score	65.31 (29.1)	49.85 (19.82)	47.14 (22.32)
Large units	36.31 (18.25)	27.0 (12.6)	24.71 (11.4)
Small units	29.0 (12.49)	22.85 (9.44)	22.43 (11.53)

Analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures was used to assess treatment effects in the groups for the total score for phonological awareness, as well as for the composite scores for large and small phonological units. Separate ANOVAs with repeated measures carried out individually for each of the two experimental groups to provide a comparison with the control group identified significant interactions. Furthermore, t-tests were used to specifically identify the differences between the groups. This approach was considered reasonable for analyzing the process of intervention.

For the total score for phonological awareness, no differences were found in the effect magnitude between the groups (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Phonological awareness scores analyzed with 3 (group: pitch, rhythm, sports) by 2 (time: pretest vs. post-test) ANOVAs with repeated measures on the last factor.

Phonological awareness	Effects	df	F	η²	p
Total score	Time (T)	1, 37	33.556*	.476	.001
	Group (G)	2, 37	1.875	.092	.168
	T x G	2, 37	1.609	.080	.214
Large units	T	1, 37	20.020*	.351	.001
	G	2, 37	1.599	.080	.216
	T x G	2, 37	2.721	.128	.079
Small units	T	1, 37	23.271*	.386	.001
	G	2, 37	1.807	.002	.178
	T x G	2, 37	0.044	.089	.957

p < .01

Using the composite score for large phonological units, the ANOVA showed a trend towards a group by time interaction (see Table 4). Although this interaction did not reach significance, the large mean differences between the groups in the post-test (see Table 3) were of great interest to us, and we analyzed the interaction in greater detail with additional repeated measures ANOVAs to compare the groups in pairs, as follows.¹

For the comparison between the pitch group and the sports control group, a repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for time, F(1, 25) = 10.814, p = .003, η² = .302, with phonological awareness of large units improving over the course of both programs. No significant main effect was found for group, F(1, 25) = 2.162, p = .154, η² = .080. Furthermore, this analysis showed a significant group by time interaction, F(1, 25) = 4.724, p = .039, η² = .159, dcorr = 0.58. Subsequent independent t-tests were carried out to clarify this interaction, and they showed that while the pitch group and the sports control group did not differ significantly in the pretest, t(25) = 0.615, p = .544, a clear difference was revealed in the post-test, t(25) = 1.996, p = .057. When comparing the pretest and post-test measures of the composite score for large phonological units within each group with a dependent t-test, the pitch group showed a significant increase in phonological awareness on the word level, t(12) = -3.374, p = .006, whereas the sports group did not improve, t(13) = -0.923, p = .373.

In the comparison between the rhythm group and the sports control group, a repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for time, F(1, 25) = 8.590, p = .007, η² = .256, with phonological awareness of large units improving over the course of both programs. No significant main effect for group was revealed, F(1, 25) = 0.010, p = .923, η² < .001. Additionally, this analysis showed no significant group by time interaction, F(1, 25) = 2.594, p = .120, η² = .094, dcorr = 0.14.

In the comparison between the two experimental groups, a repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant main effect for time, F(1, 24) = 21.607, p < .001, η² = .474, with phonological awareness of large units improving over the course of both programs. No significant main effect for group was revealed, F(1, 24) = 2.173, p = .153, η² = .083. Furthermore, the analysis showed no significant group by time interaction, F(1, 24) = 0.662, p = .424, η² = .027.

Taken together, after the period of training, the pitch group showed a significant increase in phonological awareness of large phonological units compared to the sports control group. None of the other group comparisons revealed significant differences. Moreover, the pitch group showed a significant improvement in phonological awareness of large phonological units between the pre- and post-test.

The analysis revealed no differential effects between the groups on the composite score for small phonological units (see Table 4).

Discussion

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of programs focused on rhythm and pitch on phonological awareness in preschoolers. These effects were compared with a sports program from which no effect on phonological awareness was expected.

At the pretest, no significant differences were found between the three groups (rhythm program, pitch program, and sports program) regarding control variables and phonological awareness. Therefore, the groups were comparable.

After the training phase, the pitch program had a positive effect (dcorr = 0.58) on phonological awareness of large phonological units, and the pitch group improved significantly from pre- to post-test in contrast to the sports control group. Although the rhythm group also showed an increase in phonological awareness, this difference did not reach significance when compared to the sports control group, and the effect size (dcorr = 0.14) was small. All three groups reflected a similar development in phonological awareness of small phonological units. As hypothesized, a positive effect was revealed for phonological awareness on the word level. Based on this result, a specific causal relationship between pitch training and phonological awareness seems plausible.

This result is in line with Patel’s hypothesis (SSCLMH: 2008), namely, that the categorical building blocks of music (musical notes) are related to the categorical building blocks of language (phonemes). The notes correspond well to the pitch training in our study that focused on pitch perception and reproduction, while the phonemes correspond to the phonological awareness that we measured before and after the training. Also, our results agree with those of Herrera et al. (2011), who showed improved rhyming as a result of phonological training based on songs in particular. Indeed, our pitch program contained joint singing of songs and rhymes for children. These songs were based on repeated pitch contours, catchy rhymes and melodies that are lengthened, repeated and stressed. These sounds are similar to infant-directed speech which makes children aware of sounds in speech and facilitates their phonological awareness on the word level (see also Bryant et al., 1989; Corbeil et al., 2013; Fisher & McDonald, 2001; Thiessen, Hill, & Saffran, 2005; Trehub & Trainor, 1998). Furthermore, our results also agree with the conclusions of McMullen and Saffran (2004), who argued that music and language rely on the same statistical learning mechanisms, namely the extraction of an abstract set of rules, in order to form “native” sound categories. The pitch training promoted general auditory sensitivity in order to extract structures and units in speech. This is demonstrated for phonological awareness on the word level, particularly rhyming and segmentation of words.

However, our results show that children’s phonological awareness on the phonemic level did not improve, despite the theoretical framework of Patel (2008) clearly indicating that the categorical building block of language refers to phonological awareness of small and large units. Likewise, Fisher and McDonald (2001), as well as Thiessen et al. (2005), say that trained acoustic sensitivity should strengthen children’s awareness of speech sounds on both levels. A possible reason could be that the training period of 16 weeks was too short to sufficiently impact the precise auditory sensitivity that is crucial for the extraction and manipulation of phonemes. Indeed, Herrera and colleagues’ (2011) training study lasted for two years, and the phonological training group with music improved in phonological awareness on the word as well as on the phonemic level. Similarly, Moritz and colleagues’ (2013) study lasted for one year, and the experimental group improved in phonemic skills. Bolduc (2009) used a training period of only 15 weeks with daily 60-minute sessions. However, as mentioned earlier, neither Bolduc (2009) nor Moritz et al. (2013) had a control group, which makes it difficult to interpret the results with great confidence. Gromko (2005) used a training period of four months and also found improvements on the phonemic level, but this study used a pseudo-random assignment that makes it difficult to interpret the results.

Interestingly, our results do not reflect the theoretical frameworks of Tierney and Kraus (2014) or Goswami (2011), which point to rhythmic abilities being core mechanisms for music and language. Indeed, studies with dyslexic children have shown that there is a link between auditory perception skills and rhythm skills (Flaugnacco et al., 2014; Huss et al., 2010). The authors of the above studies argue that accurate perception of rhythmical structure is critical for phonological development, and musical rhythm training could be beneficial for dyslexic children. However, this argument does not necessarily mean that normally developing children would benefit from musical rhythm training as much as dyslexic children. In another study by Verney (2009),normally developing children were trained with either a rhythmic speech program, or a program of music games and songs for seven weeks. The results showed that both programs increased phonological skills, especially in rhymes and syllable awareness. However, there was no indication that one program was more effective that the other. Unfortunately, he compared the experimental groups with a control group receiving no training. Thus, the influence of attention effects such as the Hawthorne effect on the experimental groups cannot be ruled out. By contrast, our study focused exclusively on rhythm and pitch to disentangle the influences of these basic music essentials on phonological awareness. Additionally, both of the experimental groups as well as the control group received the same amount of training time in order to rule out attention effects.

Limitations and future direction

In order to determine the most effective proportions of rhythm and pitch in music training to promote phonological awareness, separation between these basic music essentials is necessary, but difficult to achieve. As mentioned earlier, overlaps between these elements exist naturally because the rhythm program as well as the pitch program are both linked to rhythmic grouping, metrical structures, and prosody in terms of tonality and accents. Thus, the positive effect of the pitch training on phonological awareness cannot be explained solely by pitch.

Unfortunately, this study had no follow-up measure, which would allow analysis of the sustainability of the effects. However, participating children in this study were between four and six years old and a follow-up measure, perhaps one year later, would mean that at least some of these children would have started at school, and schooling causes a significant increase in phonological awareness (Marx, 2007). Thus, the complete equivalence of these groups in this regard could not be guaranteed anymore unless the school children were eliminated, which would in turn diminish the sample size.

The sample size was relatively small because close contact with the kindergartens for over six months with high frequency training every week turned the experiment into a very cost-, time-, and effort-intensive project. Future studies should consider these factors to establish causation with a larger sample size. However, despite the small sample size in this study, we found a significant effect of pitch training on phonological awareness, with a medium effect size (dcorr = 0.58) confirming its effectiveness (Cohen, 1988). Although, the combination of pitch and rhythm yields the highest effect size (dcorr = 0.9; Degé & Schwarzer, 2011), the focus of this study was to disentangle the influence of rhythm and pitch as basic music essentials, in order to identify their individual effectiveness on phonological awareness. From the current results it would seem that the positive effect on phonological awareness is driven by pitch for the most part. Therefore, based on these findings, a greater emphasis on pitch in music training programs could lead to increased effectiveness of these programs in enhancing phonological awareness.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a graduate scholarship from the Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen. The authors would like to thank the children and parents who participated in this study as well as the kindergartens for their support.

Notes

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