The next question of interest was whether the power of music to predict
reading is a result of shared variance between musical skills and phonological
awareness, or whether music predicts reading after the variance due to
phonological awareness has been removed. A hierarchical regression was
conducted with reading scores as the dependant variable. Phonological
awareness was entered on the first step. For 4-year-olds, the music macrovariable
was entered on the second step. For 5-year-olds, the pitch macrovariable
was entered on the second step. (Rhythm was not entered as the
simple correlation between rhythm and reading was not significant.) For
the 4-year-olds, music accounted for significant variance after phonemic
awareness had been entered (Table 5). For the 5-year-olds, pitch accounted