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Musical playschool activities are linked to faster auditory development…
Musical playschool activities are linked to faster auditory development during preschool-age: a longitudinal ERP study
METHODS
Subjects
The data were obtained in 84 recordings from 33 healthy children. The children were divided to Music and Control groups based on the duration of their attendance in a musical playschool.
Procedure
After the nature of the experiment and the rights of the participants were explained to the parents and children, a written consent was obtained from the parents and a verbal one from the children. The children were rewarded with movie tickets and a toy, game or a book for their participation.
Stimuli
We employed the Melodic multi-feature paradigm that has been used in previous studies in
school-aged children in adults. The paradigm is composed of 360 piano-melodies. The paradigm included the following changes types. 1) The melody modulation 2) The Rhythm 3) The Transposition 4) Timbre 5) Mistuning
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Data analysis
Mean amplitudes for each change type were calculated from the change-minus-standard difference signals over the 50-ms time windows centered. Different windows were chosen for the different change types since it is known that the latencies of mismatch responses can wary depending on the change type. Since the current paradigm has not been previously used in this age range we had no a priori expectations on the exact latencies of the responses.
Although even newborns display some impressive auditory processing abilities, converging evidence from behavioral and brain measures indicates that the human auditory system continues to mature long after early childhood.
Music offers a particularly interesting framework for studying auditory development. Music is among the most complex stimuli the maturing auditory system encounters and therefore music processing may show a distinctive developmental trajectory.
The influence of musical experience on brain development has been mostly studied in school-agedchildren with formal musical training while little is known about the possible effects of less formal musical activities typical for preschool-aged children.
RESULTS
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Melody modulation
The response to the Melody modulation was significantly larger at age 6 years in the
Music group than in the Control group, but not at age 2 years. The response shifted towards negative polarity with age more rapidly in the Music group than in the Control group. There was a significant change in response amplitude with age in the Music groups but not in the Control group.
Timbre deviant
The response to the Timbre deviant became more negative in amplitude with age and was larger in the Music group at age 6. There was no group difference at age 2 in the response amplitude.
Rhythm modulation
Also for the rhythm modulation, the Music group showed larger responses that the
Control. There was also a trend for a more rapid shift towards negative polarity in the Music than in the Control group.
Transposition
For the transposition, the responses appeared to shift towards negative polarity with age, but the main effect of Age remained at a trend level. No group differences were found.
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