We examined the relations among phonological awareness, music perception
skills, and early reading skills in a population of 100 4- and 5-year-old children. Music
skills were found to correlate significantly with both phonological awareness and
reading development. Regression analyses indicated that music perception skills contributed
unique variance in predicting reading ability, even when variance due to
phonological awareness and other cognitive abilities (math, digit span, and vocabulary)
had been accounted for. Thus, music perception appears to tap auditory mechanisms
related to reading that only partially overlap with those related to
phonological awareness, suggesting that both linguistic and nonlinguistic general
auditory mechanisms are involved in reading.