The Effects of Training in Discrimination of Pitches on the Ability to Discriminate Speech Sounds in Primary Age Children Classified as Learning Disabled in the Area of Auditory Discrimination

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine whether training in discrimination of pitches affects the ability of learning disabled children to discriminate speech sounds. Subjects were 64 children, ages six to nine years, who were enrolled in a learning disabilities program in a public school system, and had been identified by the school district as learning disabled in the area of auditory discrimination. According to the Solomon Four-Group design, these subjects were assigned to four groups: (1) pretest with treatment; (2) pretest with no treatment; (3) no pretest with treatment; and (4) no pretest with no treatment. The Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test, Revised, Form IA, and an author-constructed Pitch Discrimination Test (PD) were used as pre- and posttests. Training consisted of ten sessions, 15 to 20 minutes in length, which were conducted over a five-week period. Experimental subjects were trained to discriminate pairs of successive pitches of no less than a major second and no more than two octaves. Control groups received no training. Preliminary to other analyses of the data, the number of items on the PD test was reduced from 60 to 40, eleminating those items which did not appear to differentiate subjects who could hear differences in pitch. The reliability of the test, which was determined using the Pearson product-moment correlation method, was .69 for the 40 item test. Since stimuli used for the test items werer either guitar or resonator bells, items were grouped according to the stimulus used, and a Spearman rank-correlation coefficient of .72 was obtained. Other analyses included analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, t-test for independent samples, and cross-tabulations. Results indicated that pretesting and treatment did not significantly influence posttest scores on the PD test, but that interaction between testing and treatment did have an effect (p<.05). Results also indicated that age significantly affected posttest scores (p<.02). Therefore, it was concluded that pitch discrimination is significantly affected by age, and a recommendation was made that future research be designed to delineate the implied developmental nature of pitch discrimination. There were no significant effects (p<.05) on the posttest scores on the Wepman test due to treatment or interaction, but pretesting caused significant effects (p<.01) on posttest scores. The correlation of scores on the PD test with those on the Wepman test was small (r = .24) but positive; therfore, it was concluded that there is a positive correlation between pitch discrimination and speech sound discrimination. It was recommended that this positive relationship be researched in an effort to define explicitly the relationship which exists. From the findings of future research, it may be possible for the music therapy profession to develop much needed diagnostic tools and treatment/remediation techniques.

Keyword(s): pitch-discrimination, training, learning-disability, auditory-discrimination, speech, children, Wepman-Auditory-Discrimination-Test.

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