Educational Psychology

ISSN: 0144-3410 (Print) 1469-5820 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedp20

The Relationship between Music and Reading in

Beginning Readers

Susannah J. Lamb & Andrew H. Gregory

To cite this article: Susannah J. Lamb & Andrew H. Gregory (1993) The Relationship
between Music and Reading in Beginning Readers, Educational Psychology, 13:1, 19-27, DOI:
10.1080/0144341930130103

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144341930130103

Published online: 29 Sep 2006.

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 Educational Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1993 19

The Relationship between Music and Reading in

Beginning Readers
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SUSANNAH J. LAMB & ANDREW H. GREGORY, Department of Psychology,

University of Manchester

ABSTRACT This study investigated the relationship of both phonemic and musical sound
discrimination to reading ability in children in their first year at school. Awareness to
changes in pitch and timbre of musical stimuli was assessed using a specially designed test
of musical ability. Tests of phonemic awareness and of reading performance were also
administered, with particular emphasis on ability at employing phonic skills in reading.
The results support the hypothesis that discrimination of musical sounds is related to
reading performance, but reveal that the influential factor in this relationship is a specific
awareness of pitch changes.

It is generally considered that the acquisition of listening skills is a prerequisite to

learning to read. Research into the relationship between auditory discrimination skills
and reading achievement has primarily involved tests of phonemic awareness (Bradley
& Bryant, 1985; Stuart-Hamilton, 1986). However, it has not been demonstrated
whether the required listening skills need to be specifically phonemic in nature. The
present study investigates the relationship of both phonemic and musical (non-
phonemic) listening skills to reading ability.
Although reading is a very complex process, two different mental procedures which
allow a child to read a word successfully can be described. Word recognition involves
the learning of a direct correspondence between the complete string of letters in a
word and its spoken form, while phoneme recognition uses the intermediate step of
learning the groups of letters corresponding to phonemes and constructing words from
these. Skilled reading requires the use of both techniques and a discussion of the
process of learning to read must therefore be concerned with the acquisition and
relative importance of the two procedures.
Frith (1985) provides a model of the process of learning to read in terms of three
sequential stages. A logographic stage involving the instant recognition of familiar
 20 S. J. Lamb & A. H. Gregory

words is followed by an alphabetic stage where the knowledge and correspondences

between individual phonemes and graphemes is learned. The final, orthographic, stage
enables the reader to analyse words instantly into orthographic units without phonolo-
gical conversion. Frith claims that these stages provide a natural developmental
sequence, but they can be influenced by the stresses placed on particular strategies by
different teaching methods (Barr, 1974). There are also tendencies for individual
children to adopt a particular reading strategy despite the teaching method employed
(Baron & Treiman, 1980). There will, however, always be a stage in literacy
acquisition in which the dominant procedure for reading depends on grapheme-to-
phoneme correspondences.
Bradley and Bryant (1985) suggest that for children to employ the phonic procedure
successfully, they must recognise that a spoken word is made up of particular sounds,
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each of which corresponds to a particular letter. They carried out a longitudinal study
in which children aged 4 or 5 years had to listen to three or four short words, all but
one of which had either the initial, middle or end sound in common, and they had to
detect the odd one out. Their scores on this test of phonemic discrimination signifi-
cantly predicted their reading and spelling performance 3 or 4 years later. Bradley and
Bryant (1985) also demonstrated that training children to recognise words that share
common beginning, middle and end sounds facilitates progress in reading and spelling.
Stuart-Hamilton (1986) devised a simpler test of phonemic awareness which just
required children to say whether or not two words started with the same sounds or
ended with the same sounds. He found that beginning readers possessing phonemic
awareness had a better reading style than those without, particularly in graphemic
processing.
The importance of phonemic awareness in the development of reading skills is
further demonstrated by studies involving disabled readers. Bradley and Bryant (1978)
showed that backward readers were considerably worse at detecting rhyme and
alliterations than younger average readers of the same reading age. Snowling et al.
(1986) also found backward readers to perform significantly less well on tasks
involving verbal segmentation skills.
The importance of structured learning of pre-reading skills in nursery school has
also been demonstrated. Riding and Simmons (1989) showed that such a programme
improved the rate of reading progress during the first year at primary school.
The development of musical ability in children has been well reviewed by Har-
greaves (1986). He states that it is generally agreed that the ability to discriminate
pitch improves through childhood, but there is some dispute as to the level reached at
different ages. Bentley (1966) devised a test of musical abilities for children from 7
years upwards, which includes pitch discrimination, tonal memory, chord analysis and
rhythm perception. On the pitch discrimination task, he found that the majority of 7-
year-olds could discriminate a quarter-tone pitch difference, so it seems unlikely that
pitch discrimination is a limiting factor in musical perception at this age.
Studies enquiring into the relationship between musical perception and reading skill
are very limited in number. Parker (1970) gave Bentley's musical abilities test to
11-13-year-old backward readers and normal readers matched for intelligence and
concluded that musical perception is not related to reading ability. However, a study
on younger children aged 7-11 years by Barwick et al. (1989) did find a significant
correlation between the tonal memory and chord analysis subtests of Bentley's musical
abilities scale and reading ability.
Atterbury (1985) compared the musical abilities of 7-9-year-old reading-disabled
 Music and Reading 21

and normal children. She found that backward readers were significantly impaired on
tonal memory and rhythm production, but not on rhythm perception. Doehring and
Rabinovitch (1969) found that children with learning problems were worse than
normal children of the same age on a test of discriminating simultaneous tones.
Many music educators continue to stress the importance of music, particularly in
the primary classroom. Kokas (1969) reported improvements in reading in a normal
school population in Hungary after introducing the Koddly system of teaching music
into the curriculum. This is a carefully structured and intensive programme designed
to teach the basics of music through folk song. Hurwitz et al. (1975) cited the Koddly
system as a contributing factor in the acceleration of reading skills of normal American
children in their first year at school. Significant differences in academic achievement,
including reading, existed between children who had received the Koddly music
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instruction and those who had not.

The importance of systematic training in musical skills is also emphasised by
educationalists in Great Britain. Reading 360 (1978) is a reading programme designed
with balanced emphasis on whole-word and phonic skills developed through reading,
writing, listening and speaking. The programme claims that music training can be of
immense benefit to a child's language development. It stresses that practice in listen-
ing skills involving discriminations of pitch, rhythm, duration and timbre can be
helpful in distinguishing phonemes and morphemes, recognising similar sounds in
words and gaining fluency in reading through an awareness of the rhythmic structure
of language.
McMahon (1979) trained young children to discriminate between pairs of three-
note chords, some differing only by a semitone, and this improved word recognition,
reading and general phonic skills compared with a matched untrained group.
Investigations into the effect of musical training on reading achievement assume
that a relationship exists between an awareness of changes in musical sounds and
phonemic awareness, which will in turn enhance reading performance. Few researchers
have provided data that validate that assumption; nor have they systematically
investigated the direct relationship between musical awareness and special reading
skills.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate this relationship, by giving tests
of reading, musical ability and phonemic awareness to a group of children in their first
year at school. It was hypothesised that children achieving high scores on the tests of
musical ability would also score highly on phonemic awareness. These children were
also expected to perform well on the reading tests, particularly those requiring phonic
skills.

Method
Sample
A total of 18 infant children from the reception class of primary school were involved
in the study. There were nine males and nine females from a range of social
backgrounds, all of whom lived in homes which used English as the first language.
Their ages ranged from 4 years 9 months to 5 years 4 months with a mean age of 5
years 1 month.
 22 S. J. Lamb & A. H. Gregory

Tests and Procedures

Simple Reading Test. This was adapted from a test formulated by the Thomas Coram
Research Unit (Tizard et al., 1988) for children at the end of their reception year in
infant school. It comprised four subtests:

(1) Concepts about print. The materials comprised Dick Bruna's book When I'm Big,
and 12 cards depicting numbers, letters, words and sentences. The story book was used
to test if the children knew where to start reading and where to continue after starting.
The cards were then placed in random display on the table in front of the child and the
child was asked to indicate two cards with just one word on and two with just one
letter on.
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(2) Word matching. Ten cards were presented, one at a time, and for each the child
was asked to look carefully at a target word on the left-hand side and then asked to
show which word from a set of four words on the right-hand side was the same as the
target word. All the words were hand-printed in lower case.
(3) Letter sounding. A total of 26 cards, on each of which was a hand-printed lower
case letter of the alphabet, were shown in random order. The child was asked to sound
each letter as it was presented. If the name of the letter was produced, then the child
was asked again what sound it made.
(4) Word reading. A total of 15 cards were presented, on each of which was a hand-
printed lower case word. These were selected as being the most common words found
in reading schemes used by the ILEA. The child was asked to read each word aloud
and, if not sure, encouraged to sound out the letters.

Phonic Reading Test. An additional test of phonic skills was provided by three of the
subtests from Daniels and Diack's (1960) 'Standard Reading Tests': tests 7b and 7c,
involving consonantal blends respectively at the beginnings and ends of phonically
simple words, and test 7h, involving the ability to read nonsense syllables. Eight items
from tests 7b and 7c were used and all 12 items from test 7h.

Musical Ability. No appropriate test of musical ability was found with norms extending
down to the age of five. A test was therefore specifically designed. This had two
subtests:

(1) Pitch awareness. The child listened to pairs of musical notes or chords and was
asked whether or not they sounded the 'same' or 'different' in pitch. The test
comprised two practice items followed by eight test items for pairs of single notes,
two-note chords and three-note chords. For the pairs of single notes, the first practice
item differed in pitch by a perfect 4th and the second showed no difference. Five of
the eight test items differed in pitch, one by a perfect 4th, one by a major 3rd, one by a
whole tone and two by a semitone. Rising and falling intervals alternated and the
difference interval became progressively smaller. The sets of two-note chords and
three-note chords were similar. For the two-note chords, the changing note alternated
between the higher and the lower note of the chord. For the three-note chords, six of
the eight pairs were different, the final two pairs having the middle note rising or
falling by a semitone.
All notes were of 0.5 second duration, with an interval between the notes of 0.5
 Music and Reading 23

seconds. The interval between items was 8 seconds. The tones were generated by a
Roland MT-32 synthesizer controlled by a BBC model B computer using Electromusic
Research's 'Composer' program. An Acoustic Piano timbre was used. The pitch of the
notes varied from C#4 (277Hz) to F# 5 (740Hz).
(2) Timbre awareness. The child listened to two sounds and was asked whether they
sounded the 'same' or 'different' on the basis of the timbre or quality of the two
sounds. Two practice items were given, the first being two single tones of the same
pitch and clearly different timbre, and the second pair being identical in both pitch and
timbre. Eight test pairs of tones were then given, six of which differed in timbre. The
timbre difference became progressively more difficult. The order of difficulty was
previously determined by giving each pair to a group of adult judges who were asked
to rate their similarity. The stimulus details and method of production were the same
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as for the pitch awareness test, apart from the variation in timbre.
For both parts of this test it was necessary to ensure that the child understood the
terms 'same' or 'different'. The tester presented a red pencil and a yellow biro to the
child asking "Are these two things in front of you the same or different?" If the child
correctly replied that the two were different, they were asked to justify the decision.
The tester did not proceed with the music test until she was satisfied that the child did
understand these concepts.
The practice items were introduced by the tester saying "In a moment you're going
to hear two sounds. Sometimes the first sound will be the same as the second sound
and sometimes the first sound will be different from the second sound. I want you to
listen very carefully to both sounds and afterwards I will ask you if they sounded the
same or different." Feedback was given for the practice items, but no feedback was
given during the actual test. For the timbre test the child was asked if they were the
same or different "sort of sound". r

Phonemic Awareness. This was a shortened version of the test of Phonemic Awareness
used by Stuart-Hamilton (1986). This involved alliterations and rhymes, where the
child had to judge if two spoken words began or ended with the same sound. The
words all were single syllables, with initial and final consonants and a medial vowel.
Full alliterations and rhymes had both the appropriate consonant and the vowel the
same, and half alliterations and rhymes had only the appropriate consonants the same.
There were 32 words in total.

Nonverbal Ability. As a test of general nonverbal ability, the Coloured Progressive

Matrices (Raven, 1956) was used.

General Procedure
The children were tested individually in a quiet room. The tests were administered
over five sessions. One test was given in each session, so that loss of concentration was
not a problem. Because of the difficulties in testing children of this age, great care was
taken to establish a rapport with the children to make them feel at ease in the testing
situation and ensure that they understood the questions being asked.
 24 S. J. Lamb & A. H. Gregory

Results
The mean, standard deviation and range of all the measurements are shown in Table I.

TABLE I. Mean, standard deviation and range of all measures

Mean SD Range Max. possible

Age (months) 61.1 2.5 57-64

Nonverbal ability 18.6 3.3 14-24 36
Simple Reading Test
Concepts about print 7.0 2.8 0-10 10
Word matching 8.3 1.6 4-10 10
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Letter sounding 22.9 4.9 10-26 26

Word reading 10.1 3.1 4-15 15
Phonic Reading Test
Consonantal blends 7.6 5.6 0-16 16
Nonsense syllables 7.3 3.7 0-11 12
Phonemic Awareness 12.6 2.5 8-16 16
Music
Pitch 1 5.7 1.8 2-8 8
Pitch 2 5.3 1.3 2-7 8
Pitch 3 4.6 1.4 3-7 8
Timbre 6.0 1.5 3-8 8

The majority of the tests are seen to be well suited to the abilities of the children,
with just the word matching and letter sounding subtests of the simple reading test
showing a slight ceiling effect.
All subtest scores were converted to a standard scale, with the same mean and
standard deviation, before being added to give a total score for each test. Pearson
Product Moment Correlation Coefficients were then calculated between the two
reading tests, pitch, timbre, phonemic awareness, age and nonverbal ability. The
matrix of correlation coefficients is shown in Table II.

TABLE II. Correlation coefficients between all measures

Nonverbal Simple Phonic

Age Ability Reading Reading Pitch Timbre

Nonverbal Ability 0.00

Simple Reading 0.00 0.37
Phonic Reading 0.01 0.02 0.76**
Pitch -0.10 0.36 0.77** 0.56*
Timbre -0.16 -0.06 -0.04 0.29 0.27
Phonemic Awareness 0.27 0.14 0.67** 0.76** 0.60** 0.31

*P<0.05; **P<0.01.

Nonverbal ability and age did not correlate significantly with any of the other
measures, but as some of the correlation coefficients approached significance, it was
considered advisable to calculate partial correlation coefficients, removing the effects
of age and nonverbal ability. These are shown in Table III.
 Music and Reading 25

TABLE III. Correlations after partialling out age and Nonverbal Ability

Simple Phonic
Reading Reading Pitch Timbre

Phonic Reading 0.81**

Pitch 0.74** 0.59*
Timbre 0.02 0.30 0.31
Phonemic Awareness 0.70** 0.83** 0.65** 0.38

*/><0.05; **p<0.01
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This shows that pitch discrimination is significantly correlated with both reading
tests, that timbre discrimination is not significantly correlated with any of the other
measures and that phonemic awareness is significantly correlated with both reading
tests and also with pitch discrimination.

Discussion
Children who were most able to isolate and manipulate phonemes in words, as
measured by the test of phonemic awareness, achieved greater success on the two tests
of reading than those who had difficulty with the phonemic awareness test. This
confirms previous studies by Bradley and Bryant (1985) and by Stuart-Hamilton
(1986) on the relation between phonemic awareness and reading ability.
Performance on the specially devised test of musical ability indicates its suitability
for children in their first year of schooling. The duration of the subtests was short
enough to hold the children's attention throughout all the items and the test proved
interesting for the children. The lack of a significant correlation between the pitch
discrimination and timbre discrimination subtests implies that the two tasks require
substantially different skills.
Children achieving high scores on pitch discrimination also did well on phonemic
awareness and showed good reading performance. However, not all auditory discrimi-
nation skills seem equally beneficial to the process of learning to read. Being able to
discriminate difference in pitch is more highly associated both with reading and with
the ability to discriminate speech sounds than is the ability to discriminate different
qualities of sounds.
This conclusion supports Harris's (1947) claim that basic to the hearing of sounds
in words is an awareness of pitch differences. The process of extracting and encoding
phonemic information has been extensively studied by researchers concerned with
perception of speech. Liberman et al. (1967), for instance, demonstrated that the pitch
change involved in the second formant transition is "probably the most impotant
carrier of linguistic information in the speech signal" (p. 434).
A similar proposal is advanced by Godfrey et al. (1981) in their investigations of the
difficulties of backward readers in perceiving speech sounds. They found significant
differences between reading-disabled and normal children in their discrimination of
stop consonants, and also that the reading-disabled children were inconsistent in their
phonetic classification of auditory cues.
An ability to perceive slight differences in phonemes thus appears to depend on the
ability to extract information about the frequencies of the speech sounds. It is
 26 S. J. Lamb & A. H. Gregory

reasonable to assume that such an ability is related to the discrimination of pitch

differences in music.
The wide range of scores on the tests concerned with phonic reading skills indicates
that some children are adept at using these skills whilst others are still unable to break
down a written word into its constituent sounds. This suggests that the children
participating in the study are at a stage of transition in their methods of reading. In
terms of Frith's (1985) developmental model, some children appear to remain
dependent on the logographic skills of early reading, whilst others have progressed to
the alphabetic stage as demonstrated by their competence in reading unfamiliar and
nonsense words successfully through the use of grapheme-phoneme rules.
Frith claims that children have usually become accomplished at this technique by
the time they are 8 years of age—considerably older than the children in this study. It
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should be noted that the reception class to which the children in this study belonged
were given considerable practice in the use of phonics, which may explain why the
children appeared to be relatively advanced in their progression to the alphabetic stage
of reading development.
A correlational study necessarily precludes the possibility of drawing causal infer-
ences from the data. Ideally, a longitudinal investigation is required relating children's
scores on pitch discrimination and others aspects of musical ability to their progress in
reading over a period of time. Combined with an examination of the effects of training
a subgroup of children specifically in the detection of changes in pitch, this would
establish whether the relationships revealed in this study are causal.
The educational implication which would follow if musical awareness is a reliable
predictor of phonemic awareness and reading ability, as tentatively proposed by this
study, is that carefully structured musical training should be an essential component of
the primary school curriculum.

Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the pupils and staff, particularly Mrs Childs and Mr Tomlinson, at
Christ Church Primary School, Upper Armley, Leeds, for their interest and coopera-
tion.

Correspondence: Andrew Gregory, Department of Psychology, University of Man-

chester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK.

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