A Preliminary Exploration of Pitch Discrimination, Temporal Sequencing, and Prosodic Awareness Skills of Children Who Participate in Different School-Based Music Curricula.

Musical training has been shown to have a positive influence on a variety of skills, including auditory-based tasks and nonmusical cognitive and executive functioning tasks; however, because previous investigations have yielded mixed results regarding the relationship between musical training and these skills, the purpose of this study was to examine and compare the auditory processing skills of children who receive focused, daily musical training with those with more limited, generalized musical training. Sixteen typically developing children (second-fourth grade) from two different schools receiving different music curricula were assessed on measures of pitch discrimination, temporal sequencing, and prosodic awareness. The results indicated significantly better scores in pitch discrimination abilities for the children receiving daily, focused musical training (School 1) compared to students attending music class only once per week, utilizing a more generalized elementary school music curriculum (School 2).