Music Perception Influences Language Acquisition: Melodic and Rhythmic-Melodic Perception in Children with Specific Language Impairment

Table 2

The first three columns contain mean percentages of correct responses for children with Specific Langugage Impairment (SLI), children of comparable age (CA), and children with comparable linguistic abilities (CL). In the last three columns significance levels of the group comparisons (using the Mann-Whitney U tests) are given. Results for melodic perception are in the top section, rhythmic-melodic perception in the middle, and melody recognition at the bottom. Significant group differences are written bold.

	Correct responses			Group comparison
	SLI	CA	CL	SLI-CA	SLI-CL	CA-CL
Melodic perception
Standard	58.45%	62.70%	53.45%	0.306	0.519	0.161
Transposed	56.55%	58.45%	54.60%	0.578	0.648	0.259
Comparable	50.86%	58.81%	53.21%	0.003	0.389	0.156
Sum score	53.85%	59.23%	52.82%	0.040	0.979	0.081
Rhythmic-melodic perception
Standard	57.40%	65.15%	52.70%	0.014	0.451	0.006
Transposed	56.05%	60.65%	53.85%	0.067	0.872	0.135
Comparable	54.85%	64.85%	56.55%	0.004	0.519	0.106
Sum score	56.10%	63.55%	54.37%	0.003	0.591	0.010
Melody recognition
Standard	44.17%	55.75%	59.58%	0.033	0.073	0.678
Faster	39.83%	46.33%	53.17%	0.356	0.187	0.558
Timbre-change	56.75%	65.17%	53.17%	0.205	0.732	0.148
Transposed	46.33%	51.25%	59.58%	0.420	0.089	0.293
Sum score	46.75%	54.65%	56.42%	0.110	0.177	0.866
Spoken (control)	93.83%	98.08%	96.17%	0.113	0.955	0.130