Auditory processing and phonological awareness skills of five-year-old children with and without musical experience

Purpose: To investigate the relations between musical experience, auditory processing and phonological awareness of groups of 5-year-old children with and without musical experience. Methods: Participants were 56 5-year-old subjects of both genders, 26 in the Study Group, consisting of children with musical experience, and 30 in the Control Group, consisting of children without musical experience. All participants were assessed with the Simplified Auditory Processing Assessment and Phonological Awareness Test and the data was statistically analyzed. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the results of the sequential memory test for verbal and non-verbal sounds with four stimuli, phonological awareness tasks of rhyme recognition, phonemic synthesis and phonemic deletion. Analysis of multiple binary logistic regression showed that, with exception of the sequential verbal memory with four syllables, the observed difference in subjects' performance was associated with their musical experience. Conclusion: Musical experience improves auditory and metalinguistic abilities of 5-year-old children.