Associations Between Length of Music Training and Reading Skills in Children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
previous research has found that music training in childhood is associated with word decoding, a fundamental reading skill related to the ability to pronounce individual words. These findings have typically been explained by a near transfer mechanism because music lessons train auditory abilities associated with those needed for decoding words. Nevertheless, few studies have examined whether music training is associated with higher-level reading abilities such as reading comprehension, which would suggest far transfer. We tested whether the length of time children took music lessons was associated with word decoding and reading comprehension skills in 6- to 9-year-old normal-achieving readers. Our results revealed that length of music training was not associated with word decoding skills; however, length of music training predicted reading comprehension performance even after controlling for age, socioeconomic status, auditory perception, full-scale IQ, the number of hours that children spent reading per week, and word decoding skills. We suggest that if near transfer occurs, it is likely strongest in beginning readers or those experiencing reading difficulty. The strong association in our data—between length of music training and reading comprehension—is consistent with mechanisms involving far transfer.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".