title: Perspectives on the rhythm-grammar link and its implications for typical and atypical language development.
abstract: This paper reviews the mounting evidence for shared cognitive mechanisms and neural resources for rhythm and grammar. Evidence for a role of rhythm skills in language development and language comprehension is reviewed here in three lines of research: (1) behavioral and brain data from adults and children, showing that prosody and other aspects of timing of sentences influence online morpho-syntactic processing; (2) comorbidity of impaired rhythm with grammatical deficits in children with language impairment; and (3) our recent work showing a strong positive association between rhythm perception skills and expressive grammatical skills in young school-age children with typical development. Our preliminary follow-up study presented here revealed that musical rhythm perception predicted variance in 6-year-old children's production of complex syntax, as well as online reorganization of grammatical information (transformation); these data provide an additional perspective on the hierarchical relations potentially shared by rhythm and grammar. A theoretical framework for shared cognitive resources for the role of rhythm in perceiving and learning grammatical structure is elaborated on in light of potential implications for using rhythm-emphasized musical training to improve language skills in children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee; Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
authors.forename: Reyna L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Gordon
authors.forename: Magdalene S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.forename: C Melanie
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Schuele
authors.forename: J Devin
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: McAuley
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009146:Music; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological; D013060:Speech
keywords: children; music; prosody; rhythm; syntax