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Musical Experience Predicts Delta-Band Speech Tracking and Phonological Awareness in Young Children
Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Maria Garcia-de-Soria1, Brian Mathias1, Anne Keitel2, Anastasia Klimovich-Gray1; 1University of Aberdeen, 2University of Dundee
Successful literacy development depends on the brain's ability to extract structure from continuous auditory signals, a process supported by the alignment of low-frequency neural oscillations with stimulus rhythms, also termed cortical tracking. According to the Temporal Sampling Theory, speech and music rely on shared domain-general auditory timing mechanisms, where delta (0.5-4 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) oscillations parse information at different hierarchical levels. Deficits in delta-band tracking, which supports the processing of global temporal patterns and prosody-marked linguistic units (words and phrases), have been implicated in dyslexia. An important open question is whether music may serve as a form of early remediation by fine-tuning these higher-order temporal sampling mechanisms during active phonological training and reading acquisition of primary school children. The present study investigated whether individual differences in cortical tracking during naturalistic music and speech processing differ between children with and without musical training, and how these differences relate to developing phonological awareness (PA) and reading. EEG was recorded from 57 children aged 6–9 years, including musically trained and control participants, while they listened to continuous speech and instrumental music. Using Mutual Information (MI), we quantified the statistical dependence between the neural signal and the stimulus amplitude envelope across delta and theta bands. The results revealed that the music group exhibited enhanced speech tracking, with significantly higher MI values compared to controls, particularly in the delta band. Notably, while delta tracking was positively associated with PA, this predictive relationship was specific to the music group. No such group-specific predictive effect was found for theta tracking, consistent with the view that music’s primary transfer effects may occur at the level of slower, more global temporal structure (delta) rather than faster syllabic parsing (theta). These findings suggest that musical experience may strengthen the neural systems involved in actively tracking slow prosodic and rhythmic patterns. Consequently, music training may offer a potent remedial tool for children with dyslexia by fine-tuning the delta-band tracking mechanisms thought to support phonological development.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Speech Perception