I’m obsessed with music. I have frequently frightened people with my over-enthusiasm when one of my favorite songs comes on (I’ve learned that people don’t appreciate it when you start screaming over music when they’re driving). Thus when I came across this article today, “Research Finds Brain Link for Words, Music Ability,” it sparked my interest. The article discussed research which explains the link between music and word processing in the brain, as well as the role music can play in enhancing language learning and language development.
Music can improve speech and reading skills by increasing one’s ability to distinguish between different sounds and understand the patterns of language. Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University explained: “People's hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they've had with sound throughout their lives. Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We've found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion. For example, the trained brain gets better at detecting patterns in sounds, so that musicians are better at picking out the voice of a friend in a noisy restaurant.”
Kraus also added: “Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice… When people first learn to talk and when they talk to babies they often use musical patterns in their speech.” I thought this was interesting because one of my relatives recently had a baby and I refuse to talk in a high-pitched musical voice (it makes me feel awkward), but my mom gets all the attention of the baby because she has mastered the high-pitched musical voice. This research helps explain why babies do respond to this- it helps them hear the different sounds of a language.
This understanding of sound patterns would be very beneficial to students learning how to read, especially ESL (English as a Student Language) students. It would help ESL students increase their awareness of the sounds in the English language (phonemic awareness). Students would still need to learn how to connect sounds to their letter representations, but music exposure would help language and reading make more sense as they learn more and improve their skills.
Another link between music and the ability to read is the overlap of the brain connections which process music and language. Aniruddh D. Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego said: "Nouns and verbs are very different from tones and cords and harmony, but the parts of the brain that process them overlap." From analyzing recent research Patel also believes that music doesn’t appeal to a few areas of the brain, but to large proportions of each side of the brain.
Research also showed that the brain connections which result from music exposure help strengthen the brains ability to complete tasks unrelated to music. Gottfried Schlaug, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, explained how this works by stating: “Music making is a multisensory experience, activating links to several parts of the brain.”
This finding was the most interesting to me because it is the same concept that the Reading Horizons reading program is built on. Reading Horizons has been found to help individuals with dyslexia learn how to read because of its multisensory nature. Individuals who have dyslexia struggle to read because of the way their brain is wired, and multisensory instruction helps them create brain connections which allow them learn how to read.
Today my new favorite read, Psychology Today, themed its content around music (which luckily fits perfectly for this post) and a lot of the articles were really interesting. My favorite was “Your Music, Your Personality” about what music preferences says about your personality.
These two articles further related music to education:
“How Music Feeds and Steers Your Imagination”: about how music can enhance creativity.
“Music On Your Child’s Mind: Improving Focus Through Song”: about how music can increase focus.