Research shows that working on children’s rhythm skills will benefit grammar skills
The research shows that rhythm and learning are closely connected.
See the BodyBrainTech site for highly structured rhythmic movement activities for your students.
Summary
YEAR OF RESEARCH STUDY
2020
UNIVERSITY/RESEARCHERS
Yune S. Lee, Sanghoon Ahn, Rachael Frush Holt, E. Glenn Schellenberg
The Ohio State University, University of Toronto Mississauga
NUMBER AND AGES OF STUDENTS
164 children
Ages 7 to 17 years
METHODOLOGY
Conducted two experiments
Assessed grammar and rhythm abilities in children
Experiment 1 with 68 children for grammar comprehension and rhythm discrimination
Experiment 2 with 96 children, similar assessments with additional working memory control
OUTCOMES
Children with better rhythm skills had higher grammar test scores
Identified an association between receptive grammar and rhythm perception
Suggests shared neural mechanisms in music and language processing for rule-based temporal structures
More detail
This research, titled "Rhythm and Syntax Processing in School-Age Children" by Yune S. Lee, Sanghoon Ahn, Rachael Frush Holt, and E. Glenn Schellenberg, explores the relationship between musical rhythm skills and grammar proficiency in children. The authors conducted two experiments with children aged 7-17 years to assess their grammar and rhythm abilities. They found that children with better rhythm skills also had higher grammar test scores, even after considering factors like age, gender, music training, and maternal education. This finding was consistent across both experiments, suggesting an association between receptive grammar and rhythm perception in typically developing children. The study supports the view that music and language share neural resources for rule-based temporal processing, indicating that rhythm skills may be predictive of certain language abilities.