The development of musical abilities is very important for successful musical activities. Besides, previous research in young children suggest that the development of rhythmic skills in the early stages of school learning can contribute to the success of other important areas of learning, such as reading acquisition (Butzlaff, 2000; Miendlarzewska & Trost, 2014) or the development of phonological awareness (Anvari et al., 2002; Carson et al., 2013; Janurik et al., 2018). One of the lines of research with dyslexic children shows as well, that processing of rhythm and meter in music predicts phonological difficulties (Overy, 2003).

It is assumed that language and music share common auditory-processing mechanisms. In the model by Peretz and Coltheart (2003), acoustic processing follows two “streams”, a pitch organization stream and a temporal organization stream. The temporal organization (rhythm analysis, meter analysis and tapping skills) are linked to the development of the phonological lexicon (e.g., Corriveau & Goswami, 2009). Both temporal and spectral auditory processing abilities are related to phonological awareness, and temporal auditory processing abilities are related to reading or spelling (Steinbrink et al., 2019).

The early stages of rhythm perception begin at the age of three, however sensitivity to rhythm is manifested early in infancy. The most rapid development of rhythmic skills begins at the age of six (Erős, 1993). Research on this topic shows some differences in defining the final stage of skill development, but it can be stated that the important changes in rhythmic skills–without any musical training–take place before the age of eight (Mucsi, 2018). Development is most effective around the climax of the development curve. This particularly sensitive period for rhythmic skills is stated between the ages of six and eight. From the aspect of music pedagogy and from the aspect of its transfer effects, this period can be important for the development of rhythmic abilities in school music lessons.

This research aimed at investigating the effects of an intensive school rhythm development program, based on Hungarian music curriculum, on the development of rhythmic skills. Besides we investigated the impact of this program on phonological awareness and mental lexicon. We have developed a full school-year rhythmic development program for application in the first grade, mainly for six- and seven-year-old students. We created a collection of tasks, which consisted of 20 different rhythmic and singing games. The systematic, intensive rhythmic program is divided into four phases and contains five exercises per phase. In addition, there are additional 10 exercises, some of which the teachers can integrate into the lesson, regardless of the current curriculum or the progress of the development program. The most important methodological elements of the program were the use of rhythm counting, the metronome, graphic notation, body percussion, and the use of rhymes, rhythmic words, and singing games with rhythmic activities. The rhythmic development program extended to seven months, from October 2018 to May 2019. Since in Hungary there are two music lessons per week, we recommended fully devoting one, 45 minutes long music lesson per week to rhythmic activities. This frequency of rhythmic activities, however, only slightly shifts the thematic focus of the lesson, as most of the games can be linked to the actual song material and curriculum requirement. In order to keep students engaged, the rhythmic tasks do not need to be processed in a coherent block, and can be divided into several parts, for example three shorter 15 minutes or several 5-minute, even shorter sessions, adapted to the lesson. We had an experimental (N=96) and a control group (N=117) in this study. We applied the traditional teaching methods in the control group. Musical ability was measured by a self-developed musical ability test (Surján & Janurik, 2018). It consisted of two parts. The first part (64 items) involved discrimination tasks; the second part (28 items) measured reproduction skills, singing and rhythm clapping (Cronbach-α: discrimination .72; reproduction .92; total test .88). During the examination of discrimination, the students used headphones to solve the tasks on a tablet, while the reproduction tasks required individual test recording. The phonological awareness and mental lexicon test (90 items, Cronbach-α: .92) were online instruments (Szili, 2016).

On the pretest there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in discrimination and reproduction skills. Results show a significant difference between the two groups in the development of discrimination skills (experimental: M=67.09, SD=10.70; control: M=61.62, SD=11.33, t=3.4, p=.001). The experimental group had significantly better results on posttests in rhythm clapping (experimental: M=57.65, SD=19.30; control: M=49.10, SD=23.07, t=2.65, p=.009), in interval singing (experimental: M=45.32, SD=30.65; control: M=20.92, SD=27.48, t=5.55, p<.001) and melody singing (experimental: M=40.74, SD=32.68; control: M=24.12, SD=27.70, t=3.62, p<.001). The combined index of reproductive skills (experiment: M=48.13, SD=23.97; control: M=30.96, SD=21.53, t=4.96, p <.001) also indicates significantly higher levels of development. The phonological awareness (experimental: M=65.90, SD=15.43; control: M=50.70, SD=19.09, t=5.35, p<.001, Cohen-d=.88) and mental lexicon (experimental: M=74.89, SD=17.53; control: M=57.84, SD=17.70, t=5.99, p<.001, Cohen-d=.97) also indicate significantly higher development of the experimental group. Our rhythmic development program can be successful in classroom music teaching. While providing the syllabus required by the music curriculum and its ease of application, could contribute to the more effective development of musical abilities and its impact of phonological awareness and mental lexicon.

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