Musical training affects language in 4- and 5- year-old children.

BENITEZ MARIA ANGÉLICA; DIAZ ABRAHAN VERÓNICA; FAVIO SHIFRES; JUSTEL NADIA

Virtual

Congreso; XXXV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias.; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Musical training affects the development of different cognitive functions. This can be receptive (auditory perception of musical stimuli) or active (produce music through musical instruments or their voice). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of 12 weeks of receptive or active musical training on language and visuospatial ability for preschool children. They were randomly split into three groups: receptive or active musical training or a control group (without training). Language and visuospatial ability were evaluated through WPPSI-III (Information, Vocabulary, Word Reasoning, Receptive Vocabulary, Block Design, Object Assembly) and ENI (Language Repetition, Stick Construction, Copying a Complex Figure). Visuospatial ability and language-dependent measures were examined using a univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA). Significant differences were found between groups in the performance of the linguistic tasks. Children with musical training obtained better results than those of the control group in the majority of the subtests. In the visuospatial tasks, significant differences were found between the groups in Object Assembly here the musically trained children obtained higher scores than the control group. The results showed that the 12-week musical training could have the ability to improve the performance of the children of 4 and 5 years of age on language tasks and raises questions about its effect on other cognitive functions, such as visuospatial ability.