| More than one third of American children cannot read at a basic level by fourth grade (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007) and those numbers are even higher for African American, Hispanic and poor White students (Boorman et al., 2007). These are alarming statistics given that the ability to read is the most basic and fundamental skill for academic success (Bryant & Bradley, 1985; and Lyon, Shaywitz & Chhabra, 2005).;Reading research has claimed that phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge and rapid automatic naming (RAN) of letters and digits are three important predictors of successful reading acquisition, while phonemic awareness in kindergarten appears to be the single best predictor of future reading success (Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement [CIERA], 1998; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; Ehri et al., 2001; National Institute for Literacy, 2008; and National Reading Panel, 2000). There is strong and reliable empirical evidence that music aptitude and reading achievement are highly correlated (Anvari et al., 2001; David et al., 2007; Lamb & Gregory, 1993, Moritz, 2007).;The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental study was to investigate the relationships between music aptitude and the emergent reading achievement of 62 kindergarten students. The individual musical components of tonal aptitude and rhythmic aptitude were compared, both independently and in combination, to the reading achievement of kindergarten children. Music aptitude was assessed using the tonal and rhythm subtests of Primary Measures of Music Audiation (PMMA; Gordon, 1986). Reading achievement was measured with four individually administered subtests of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS, 6th ed.; Good & Kaminski, 2007).;Associations between music aptitude and reading achievement were explored using bivariate and multivariate correlational analyses. Although the statistical results were mixed, moderate to strong correlations were found between tonal, rhythmic, and overall music aptitude and early literacy skills including alphabet knowledge and phonemic awareness. The results of this study indicate that music aptitude is reliably and strongly associated with phonological awareness and early reading development of kindergarten children. Future research is recommended to establish whether the relationships revealed in this study are causal. |
