How playing a musical instrument helps children learn to read

Emerging research indicates that music education can significantly enhance children’s reading abilities by refining their capabilities to discern and manipulate the phonetic components that constitute words.

The connection between
musical training and early literacy has been established for some time, as well as its impact on mathematical skills. However, the underlying mechanisms were previously elusive, given that learning an instrument entails a myriad of interconnected skills.

“Playing music necessitates not only the ability to interpret notes—akin to grasping a new language of musical notation—but also requires auditory discrimination and the coordination of physical movements,” explains Maria Garcia-de-Soria from the University of Aberdeen, UK. This multifaceted nature of music education may enhance various cognitive functions, such as memory and sound processing, any of which could contribute to improved reading abilities.

To investigate the relationship between musical training and reading skills, Garcia-de-Soria and her team focused on a cohort of 57 children, aged 5 to 9, with a balanced representation of genders. About half of the participants had been taking music lessons for at least one month, dedicating a minimum of half an hour weekly, while the others engaged in non-musical extracurricular activities.

The research revealed that the children who were involved in musical training scored higher on assessments of phonological awareness, which is the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds in words—like identifying the individual phonemes in the word “cat.” These musically trained children also demonstrated advanced reading skills.

The researchers controlled for various factors affecting literacy, such as socioeconomic background and general cognitive capabilities. This careful adjustment supports the idea that the enhanced reading skills are not merely a result of the children who excel in reading being more inclined to pursue music education.

In a complementary phase of the study, the researchers used electroencephalography to monitor the children’s brain activity while they listened to a recording of the fairy tale The Gingerbread Man.

Results indicated that stronger neural activity in language-processing areas of the left hemisphere correlated with better reading performances across all participants. Interestingly, the musically-trained children exhibited superior reading scores even with lower levels of activity in these areas, which suggests they may utilize a more developed and adult-like approach to processing language.

“Typically, adults process both music and speech using a more bilateral approach, sometimes engaging the right hemisphere differently. Our findings suggest that children exposed to music training exhibit more sophisticated tracking of spoken language akin to adults,” remarks Garcia-de-Soria.

This research aligns with the progression of reading skills, where young readers start with phoneme recognition before transitioning to a more holistic understanding of words as they mature into adulthood. “Adults generally glance at words, retrieving their meanings without sounding them out internally,” adds Anastasia Klimovich-Gray, another member of the research team.

Phonological awareness serves as a foundational skill for reading, which explains why musical education enhances literacy by honing one’s phonological sensitivity, according to Klimovich-Gray. She also suggests a bidirectional relationship: “While music can enhance reading skills, the act of reading may also refine one’s musical abilities.”

Demonstrating that these proficiencies mutually reinforce each other could lead to innovative strategies for aiding children who struggle with reading. Klimovich-Gray proposes that for children who find phonological processing especially challenging—potentially before formal dyslexia diagnoses—incorporating music training alongside phonics instruction might serve as an effective enhancement method.

“The observation that musical education refines phonological encoding processes associated with language in the left hemisphere complements existing literature,” states Alice Mado Proverbio from the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy. Notably, she adds that musical training could also foster heightened specialization in the right hemisphere, facilitating more efficient reading.