The effects of Music on Language Disabilities

As a musician with many years of training, and a student with language learning impairment, I have a motivating interest in learning about the effects music might have on language development. My late-diagnosed language disability (discovered when I entered high school), consisting of phonological processing, spoken language, and reading disorders (Report of Neuropsychological Evaluation 14). I was fascinated to learn that research studies have shown that musical training enhances verbal ability including verbal memory, and perhaps language ability.

            Based on earlier studies, it had been shown that experiences early in life affect brain structure and cognitive functions and that cognitive function are highly localized in the brain. Individuals with music training tend to have an enlarged left planum temporal. It had been previously found that the left temporal lobe mediates verbal memory and the right region processes visual memory. In 1998, Chan and her associations published their findings that young adults with at least six years of music training demonstrate better verbal but not visual memory than those without musical training.

            The group sought to extend their earlier findings and published their report in 2003, ho, et al. Ho’s first objective of the experiment was to explore the effect of music training on the memory of children; the second objective was to further refine the theory in terms of the temporal relationship between the duration of music training and the development of verbal memory. In the first experiment, 90 males from a single sex all boys elementary and high school in Hong Kong volunteered for the study. Forty five of the participants were members of the school band and orchestra program and also had private lessons professional musical instructors from the Hong Kong academy for performing arts. The range of training was between 1 and 5 years with an average of almost 3 years. The subjects’ verbal memory measures were tested with the Hillt-form one test consisted of a 16-two character Chinese word list that was presented orally to each participant three times. The participant had to recall as many words as possible in the three learning trials and after 10 minute and 30 minute delayed recall trials. The subjects’ visual memory measures were tested by the brief visuospatial memory test. A test to measure general intelligence was also administered.

            The children with even just one year of music training demonstrated better verbal, ie recalled more words but not visual memory than those without such training (Ho 2003). Results also suggested that the beneficial effect of music training on verbal memory in individuals with less than 6 years of musical training. This result is also consistent with the author’s speculation that increased music training might lead to a greater extent of cortical reorganization in the left temporal region and therefore yield increasingly better verbal learning ability (Ho 2003). Ho suggests, however, that the finding do not imply that there is infinite enhancement of memory with increasing years of music training (Ho 2003).

            In a second experiment three sets of children from those who had participated in experiment 1 a year earlier were identified: the continued group were those who had continued music training for an additional year between experiment 1 and 2; the discontinued group who had not had music lessons for at least nine months before experiment 2; and the beginner group who had no music training before experiment 1 was conducted, but had music training in the one year before experiments 1 and 2. The verbal and visual tests were the same as in experiment 1. Ho et al found that those subjects who had music training both beginners and continued improved in verbal learning and retention abilities. Those who discontinued music training failed to show improvement in verbal learning and retention abilities, but memory performance remained stable over time. There were several factors that may have affected its results and thus challenge its validity and its applicability to the general population. First, only males were selected as the target group. This poses a problem because several studies have shown that there is an inherent difference in the way young males and young females learn (Great School Staff Article 1). Second, this study was performed in Hong Kong where students speak a tonal language, which has been shown to be a factor affecting learning. For example, results from a study conducted by Deutsch d. Dooley et al. indicate that that tonal language cultures have an advantage in music in terms of training those cultures to develop Absolute pitch if they are not born with it -- a major advantage that contributes to learning and understanding music (Deutsch et al. 2009). This suggests that perhaps people who speak tonal languages not only have an advantage in terms of processing and learning music but also verbal memory. The author states that the findings are not specific to Chinese people, however, because similar tests administered in Canada yielded similar results (Ho 2003).

             In “Dynamic auditory processing, musical experience and language development,” conducted by Paula Tallal and Nadine Gaab, report how mitigated language learning impairments (LLI) were improved by interventions for struggling learners. Prior studies showed that there Is a link between early spoken language impairments and subsequent literacy problems and that the core deficit is phonological impairment. Whether phonological deficits are speech specific or derive at least in part from domain general perceptual, memory, attention and/or motor constraints is an open question. A focus on sensory-motor deficits has led to the discovery of a constraint in the speed of information processing and/or production which disrupts language learning beginning with the acquisition of phonological representations suggesting a central auditory processing mechanism involved in processing dynamic spectral and/or temporal change. Each language has its own set of phenomes that must be learned from experience and represented as neural firing patterns in auditory cortex (i.e. can distinguish ba from da in a few milliseconds). Individuals with language impairments have difficulty Tracking brief, rapidly successive acoustic changes within the complex acoustic waveform of speech. There is a potential link between rapid spectrotemporal auditory processing and phological processing. They are less able to discriminate, sequence, remember, and accurately produce speech sounds.  

            Music training has been shown to improve many aspects of auditory processing and to improve cognitive language and literacy skills, leading to alterations of functional anatomy in brain areas that are used while performing various brain areas that are used when performing auditory tasks. Music and speech both share a similar developmental time and represented the most cognitively complex use of acoustic information by humans and both take advantage of dynamic modulation of acoustic parameters.

            Tallal et al. examined rapid auditory sequencing training and music training to aid individuals struggling with language and literacy skills. They found that children participating in the rapid auditory sequencing training program (Commercial available as Fast ForWord) showed substantial improvements in the rate of acoustic processing, and in speech discrimination and language comprehension, compared with well matched control group of children with LLI who received the same language training but w/ natural speech and no auditory sequencing training. Other findings included: rapid auditory sequencing training has also helped children with serious academic weaknesses that showed greater gains in oral language tasks and certain tests of phonological awareness; training performance on all measures of oral language and reading showed significant improvement; before training dyslexic subjects showed absence of metablolic activity in the temporoparietal language regions while performing letter rhyming activation task.

            Tallal also conducted another study observing the effects of music training on remediating language-learning impairments based upon her speculation of a more novel theory, suggesting that music training might enhance the ability to process rapid spectrotempral acoustic cues and alter underlying functional anatomy in hopes of strengthening auditory and phonological deficits (Tallal et al.) Tallal had both musicians vs. non musicians listen to three-tone sequences with varying ISIs and then asked them to reproduce the order of the tones manually while simultaneously examining their brains using fMRI. Results indicated that those individuals with musical training did indeed alter the functional anatomy underlying rapid spectrotemporal processing of nonlinguistic stimuli, resulting in improved behavioral performance and efficient functional neural networking involving traditional language regions (Tallal et al. 2006). These findings suggest that musical training may have a positive effect on individuals who have developmental LLI.   

            Overall, Tallal’s findings suggested that musical training not only improves nonverbal rapid spectrotrmporal processing, but also changed the neural network involved in rapid spectrotemporal processing so that it overlaps primarily with brain areas traditionally associated with language processing (Tallal 2006). Further studies, however, should focus upon the exact neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between nonverbal and verbal rapid spectrotemporal processing, its brain correlates, and the potential role musical training may play in improving language and literacy skills. 

            The effect of these studies, prototype training program and music training, is still under much study. Hopes are high. Most of these studies, however, are done in young children and older students. The age gap even between these two groups is large. Older children will have some advantage in these training programs because they have devised strategies to overcome their deficits.

            Based on my own experience using both music training and rapid auditory sequencing training, I believe that music played a larger role on my improvement of language and phonological skills. I found that the automated voices in the fast ForWord program were so automated that it was even more difficult to distinguish sounds. I also found it extremely boring which caused me to fall asleep every time I used it. Finally, I found that it always marked several of my answers wrong when they were actually correct (my speech pathologist checked this). I was one of the participants in the trial phase. My experience is not controlled.

            Around the time I was using this Fast ForWord, I had simultaneously begun formal voice lessons and had joined an orchestra in addition to my piano and flute studies. I believe these musical activities had some impact on my improved phonological difficulties, especially singing. I think that the work I had to do because I was singing in other languages forced me to sound out words and really discriminate between the different language sounds.

Works Cited  

Deutsch, D, et al. “Absolute pitch among students in American music conservatory: association with tone language fluency.” Acoustical Society of America 125.4 (2009): 2398-403. Print.

Ho, Yim-Chi, Mei-Chun Cheung, and Agnes S Chan. “Musical Training Improves Verbal but not Visual Memory: Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Explorations in Children.” Neuropsychology 17.3 (2003): 439-450. Print.

Mapou, Rob. Report of Neuropsychological Evaluation for Colette Young. Silver Spring: William R. Stixrud, Ph.D. and Associations, LLC, 2007. Print.

Tallal, Paula, and Nadine Gaab. “Dynamic auditory processing, musical experience and language development.” Trends in Neuroscience 29.7 (2006): 382-390. Print.