Effects of early musical training on musical and linguistic syntactic abilities.
Music and language are distinct auditory domains serving different communicative uses. These differences may be less apparent in infants, and similar learning mechanisms may be applied in the syntactic development of both domains. By using a harmonic priming paradigm, this study revealed that 4- to 5-year-old children have implicit knowledge of Western harmony. Musical training affected response times and accuracy in a timbre identification task, but not the magnitude of the harmonic priming effect. Children with musical training showed enhanced language abilities, particularly in morphologic rule formation and memory for words.
Marin
Manuela M
MM
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, United Kingdom. ps801mm@gold.ac.uk
D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009146:Music; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*