Twelve months of active musical training in 8- to 10-year-old children enhances the preattentive processing of syllabic duration and voice onset time

Musical training has been shown to positively influence linguistic abilities. To follow the developmental dynamics of this transfer effect at the preattentive level, we conducted a longitudinal study over 2 school years with nonmusician children randomly assigned to music or to painting training. We...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2014-04, Vol.24 (4), p.956-967
Main Authors: Chobert, Julie, François, Clément, Velay, Jean-Luc, Besson, Mireille
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Auditory Perception - physiology
Child
Cochlear Microphonic Potentials - physiology
Cognitive science
Electroencephalography
Female
Humans
Language
Language Development
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Multivariate Analysis
Music
Neuropsychological Tests
Neuroscience
Reaction Time - physiology
Teaching - methods
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Summary:Musical training has been shown to positively influence linguistic abilities. To follow the developmental dynamics of this transfer effect at the preattentive level, we conducted a longitudinal study over 2 school years with nonmusician children randomly assigned to music or to painting training. We recorded the mismatch negativity (MMN), a cortical correlate of preattentive mismatch detection, to syllables that differed in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and voice onset time (VOT), using a test-training-retest procedure and 3 times of testing: before training, after 6 months and after 12 months of training. While no between-group differences were found before training, enhanced preattentive processing of syllabic duration and VOT, as reflected by greater MMN amplitude, but not of frequency, was found after 12 months of training in the music group only. These results demonstrate neuroplasticity in the child brain and suggest that active musical training rather than innate predispositions for music yielded the improvements in musically trained children. These results also highlight the influence of musical training for duration perception in speech and for the development of phonological representations in normally developing children. They support the importance of music-based training programs for children's education and open new remediation strategies for children with language-based learning impairments.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhs377