Investigation of the relationship between rhythm perception and phonologic awareness skills in children with developmental dyslexia

This study aims to examine the musical rhythm and pitch perception skills of children with developmental dyslexia, and evaluate the relationship between these skills and phonological awareness skills. 30 children with developmental dyslexia and 30 age- gender-matched typical reading children between the ages of 6;00-8;11, whose mother language is Turkish, were included in the study. Turkish Phonological Awareness Test (FFT) applied to measure phonological awareness skills. For measuring musical rhythm and pitch perception skills, single voice and rhythm subtests of Anatolian University Music Perception Test (AMAT) were applied. It was observed that children with developmental dyslexia performed lower in phonological awareness skills, have a lower perception of rhythm and pitch. When the relationship of musical rhythm and pitch perception between phonological awareness skills was examined, there was a moderately significant positive relationship. It was concluded that phoneme combining, a subtest of FFT, has the highest relationship with both musical rhythm perception and pitch perception. Our results are in line with other studies in the literature suggesting that musical rhythm and pitch perception skills may be a key to phonological awareness and reading acquisition. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship of musical rhythm and pitch perception between phonological awareness skills in children with dyslexia whose mother language is Turkish.