Prosodic sensitivity and reading fluency of musicians and non-musicians

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Highly capable adult musicians (i.e., persons with potentially excellent prosodic skills) and non-musicians were compared in terms of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Furthermore, the study examines possible reciprocal effects of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Sixty native German-speaking university students, musicians (n = 30) and non-musicians (n = 30), completed three measures of prosodic sensitivity on the sentence level. In addition, word and nonword reading were tested. To check for possible reciprocal effects of prosodic sensitivity and reading, groups of musicians and non-musicians matched on the reading level as well as the prosodic sensitivity level were compared. The results showed that musicians outperformed non-musicians in two of the three prosodic sensitivity measures and both reading measures. Considering subgroup analysis this seems to indicate a non-reciprocal effect of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Moreover, when controlling for phonological awareness, prosodic sensitivity showed a unique effect on reading in the whole sample. Based on the results, we argue that good prosodic sensitivity can facilitate reading performance.

The relationship between basic auditory processing, prosodic sensitivity and reading in German adults

“…For adults, Chan and Wade-Woolley (2018) found a regression coefficient of .20 for word-level PS on reading in English-speaking adults when controlling for receptive vocabulary, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory and inhibitory control. Concerning sentence-level PS, Obergfell et al (2021) reported a regression coefficient of .25 on word-level reading in German-speaking adults when controlling for age and PA. The significant, direct contribution of PS on reading in the current study seems to be of moderate size, in line with previous studies.…”

“…PS describes the sensitivity to suprasegmental phonological processes such as stress, rhythm, timing and intonation in speech. Numerous studies with different orthographies and age groups have demonstrated that PS makes a unique contribution to word-level reading after controlling for PA and/or several reading-related precursors (English: Chan et al, 2020;Holliman et al, 2017a;2017b;Lin et al, 2018;Wade-Woolley, 2016;Spanish: Calet et al, 2015;Gutiérrez-Palma et al, 2016; English adults: Chan & Wade-Woolley, 2018; German adults: Obergfell et al, 2021). However, some studies did not find a unique effect of PS on word-level reading when controlling for PA (Wade-Woolley, 2016, for nonword reading) and morphological awareness (Deacon et al, 2018, for word reading) in English-speaking children.…”

“…However, a lexically unstressed syllable (ver-, -nen) generally stays unstressed (cf. Obergfell et al, 2021). Thus, sentence-level PS might require robust but simultaneously flexible suprasegmental information.…”

Prosodic features in production reflect reading comprehension skill in high school students.

“…This means that neurobiological variation that affects auditory perception may also be associated with poor reading comprehension. Indeed, studies have found that rhythmic skill predicts reading skill in beginning readers (Tierney et al, 2021), that good musicians are also better at syntactic comprehension (Obergfell et al, 2021) and that priming with regular sequences of tones facilitates subsequent silent reading comprehension in children with developmental language disorders (Przybylski et al, 2013).…”