MUSICAL INTERVENTION FOR TRAINING PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN
The benefit of music on language development has been shown by numerous Neuroscience studies, but its role in children's literacy has still been little explored. Studies on phonological awareness and musical cognition have indicated a positive association between prolonged musical training and improvement of phonological and linguistic skills (ANDRADE et al, 2023). Furthermore, temporal auditory processing such as the perception of rhythm and accents, as well as tonal processing such as tonality and melody, have shown an influence on phonological awareness and memory skills (STEINBRINK, 2019). The present study aimed to evaluate the influence of training temporal and tonal auditory processing skills on literacy, and on associated skills such as working memory, phonological awareness and vocabulary. Participants: 70 children (44 girls) aged 5 and 6 in the first year of elementary school in two private schools in ABC Paulista. Neuropsychological tests: Working memory; Receptive vocabulary; Word reading; Musical Skills Montreal Drums; Phonological Awareness Test. Scores of musical abilities showed high Spearman correlations between rhythm and musical melody (rho = 0.672), between memory and melody (rho = 0.578), between memory and rhythm (rho = 0.656, p < 0.001). The correlation between word reading and rhythm was moderate (rho = 0.331, p = 0.005), in phonemic Confias and rhythm it was moderate (rho = 0.276, p = 0.021) and in memory with rhythm it was moderate (rho = 0.249, p = 0.38). The results indicate that rhythm may be directly associated with temporal and tonal auditory processing and perception, and may corroborate literacy. The relationship between rhythm and word reading, as well as between rhythm and phonological awareness, indicates that training this skill contributes to reading and its training helps with literacy, especially in children at the beginning of the process.