Links between musical beat perception and phonological skills for autistic children

ABSTRACT

Exploring non-linguistic predictors of phonological awareness, such as musical beat perception, is valuable for children who present with language difficulties and diverse support needs. Studies on the musical abilities of children on the autism spectrum show that they have average or above-average musical production and auditory processing abilities. This study aimed to explore the relationship between musical beat perception and phonological awareness skills of children on the autism spectrum with a wide range of cognitive abilities. A total of 21 autistic children between the ages of 6 to 11 years old (M = 8.9, SD = 1.5) with full scale IQs ranging from 52 to 105 (M = 74, SD = 16) completed a beat perception and a phonological awareness task. Results revealed that phonological awareness and beat perception are positively correlated for children on the autism spectrum. Findings lend support to the potential use of beat and rhythm perception as a screening tool for early literacy skills, specifically for phonological awareness, for children with diverse support needs as an alternative to traditional verbal tasks that tend to underestimate the potential of children on the autism spectrum.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism
• beat perception
• rhythm perception
• phonological awareness
• early literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

The first and last author had the research idea for this article. The first author drafted the manuscript. The second author contributed to the creation of the experimental task, as well as to the data collection and analysis. The third author provided supervision and critically revised the work. All authors approved the final manuscript.

Notes

¹ Identity-first language, such as “on the autism spectrum” and “autistic,” is used to reflect a common preference among persons on the autism spectrum (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2021; Bury et al., 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships Program – Doctoral Scholarship awarded to the first and second author and the Fonds de Recherche Québec Santé Research Scholar Junior 1 Award and McGill University’s William Dawson Scholar Program awarded to the last author.