Influence of musical background on children’s handwriting: Effects of melody and rhythm

•Listening to a melodic background slows down children’s handwriting.•Rhythmic cues influence handwriting differently depending on children’s expertise and tempo.•Children’s handwriting skills modulate the sound background effect. Numerous studies have reported benefits of music listening to support...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental child psychology Vol. 252; p. 106184
Main Authors Lê, Margaux, Jover, Marianne, Frey, Aline, Danna, Jérémy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Inc 01.04.2025
Elsevier
Subjects
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

Loading…
More Information
Summary:•Listening to a melodic background slows down children’s handwriting.•Rhythmic cues influence handwriting differently depending on children’s expertise and tempo.•Children’s handwriting skills modulate the sound background effect. Numerous studies have reported benefits of music listening to support learning and motor rehabilitation. In the case of handwriting, previous studies suggested that musical background improves movement speed and fluency. Whether this benefit comes from the melody or is specifically related to the rhythmic cues provided by the music remains to be established. In addition, music can influence handwriting differently depending on the child’s level of expertise. To disentangle these effects, we recorded graphic movement under different sound backgrounds in children of two different grades. In total, 44 s graders and 44 fifth graders needed to copy loops and isolated words under four sound conditions: silent, melodic without metronome, melodic with slow metronome (1.6 Hz), and melodic with faster metronome (2.2 Hz). The results revealed that listening to a pure melodic background reduced writing velocity, movement fluency, and loop size in both groups. In addition, the rhythmic cues influenced handwriting kinematics differently depending on grade and task. For the younger group, the two rhythms, and especially the slow rate, increased the loop copying velocity, whereas for the words the velocity and movement fluency were reduced by the fast rate. Conversely, for the older group, the two rhythmic conditions reduced writing velocity and movement fluency, and they increased the size of both the loops and the words. Finally, the effects also depend on handwriting level; poor writers seem to benefit more from the adding of rhythmic cues. These results raise interesting perspectives for learning to write and for the rehabilitation of handwriting difficulties.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0022-0965
1096-0457
1096-0457
DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106184