Neural Correlates of Processing Syntax in Music and ... - PubMan

Experiment IV 140
cluded), [2] they learned at least one foreign language before 6 years of age (1 boy excluded),
or [3] they had any problems or delays in language acquisition (1 boy excluded).
Finally 21 children were evaluated (12 boys, 9 girls; 10;1 to 11;7 years old,
M= 10;8 years). They did play an instrument for 33 to 79 months (M= 57 months).
The children without musical training (NM; N = 31) did not learn an instrument, did not
sing in a choir, and received no extracurricular music lessons. 26 They were recruited
from public schools in Leipzig. Children were excluded, if any of the following conditions
was met: [1] They did not finish the experiment (e.g., due to lack of compliance or
problems with the measurement; 1 girl and 3 boys excluded); [2] they had language
impairments or a delayed language acquisition (2 girls and 1 boy excluded); [3] they
started to learn an instrument but gave up (1 girl excluded), [4] they had learning problems
(e.g., attention deficits or less than 70 IQ points; 2 girls excluded); or [5] they
visited another school type than the musically trained children (1 girl excluded). Finally
20 children were evaluated (10;3 to 11;10 years old, M= 11;1 years; 9 boys, 11 girls).
Notably, there was no group difference, neither in the results of the verbal part of the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (HAWIK-III; Tewes et al., 2000), nor in duration
of their parents education, nor with regard to the socio-economic status values of
their parents occupation (ISEI; Ganzeboom & Treiman, 1996). The statistical evaluation
is described in the section “Results”.
Stimuli and paradigm as well as the EEG recording and processing were identical to
Experiment III. For the ERPs, all non-rejected epochs were averaged (music: M= 77
trials [attentive part], M= 78 trials [non-attentive part]; language: M= 67 trials [attentive
part], M= 71 trials [non-attentive part]).
Statistical evaluation
The variables used in the analyses did not deviate from a standard normal distribution
(evaluated with Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests; 0.23 �� p �� ������ ������ = 0.85). Thus,
there was no need to detect and remove outliers in the data. The duration of education
and the socio-economic status of the parents as well as the verbal IQ values were compared
with t-tests for independent samples separately for each variable. Like in this
experiment, none of the additional variables from the parent’s questionnaire (e.g., the
duration of musical training in months) was significantly correlated with the ERP variables.
The behavioural results – the number of correct responses and the reaction times
– were evaluated in mixed-model ANOVAs for repeated measurements with the within-
26
It was very difficult to find participants that not even tried to learn an instrument (specifically in girls).
Thus, two children were included even though they started to learn an instrument for approx. 3 months.