14 DAY TRIAL // A team of Belgian researchers recently published a new study, showing that any correlations that may be found between dyslexia and musical abilities are far-fetched, and not rooted in fact. They say that their extensive study of the hypothesized connection yielded no clear evidence to support the initial idea, and add that music therapy should not be used as a tool to treat children suffering from this condition. Details of their work appear in the latest issue of the International Journal of Arts and Technology.
Dyslexia is currently classified as a fairly widespread learning disorder. It is estimated that between 5 and 17 percent of the entire population in the United States has problems with decoding the meaning of the text they read, with comprehending the message it contains, or with fluency in reading. The issue, studies have shown, is how dyslexic people handle phonemes, the basic sounds from which words are composed. The brains of dyslexic persons manipulate these data differently, hence the difficulties they have in making sense of what they read. In other words, the condition is a malfunction of a person's phonological processing abilities.
From this knowledge, the assumption that the disorder is correlated to amusia – poor musical skills – was drawn without much difficulty. Following the same reasoning, researchers hypothesized that bringing improvements to an individual's musical skills could also help treat dyslexia. But the new study, conducted by investigators at the Free university of Brussels, and led by cognitive neuroscientist Jose Morais, showed that this was not the case. The expert explains that studies supporting the association are flawed from a scientific perspective.
“The conscious representations of phonemes play a crucial role in the learning of literacy abilities in the alphabetic writing system. Children do not become spontaneously aware of phonemes. Nor do they become aware of phonemes by learning music,” the experts write in their journal entry. These basic building blocks of words are essentially mental representations of how the language being spoken can be broken down in smaller units. The team says that forcing a correlation between this and amusia is an unwarranted attempt.