Some Western studies have suggested a strong relation between musical discrimination abilities and reading-related skills. Music processing abilities and reading-related skills were evaluated for typically developing children and children with dyslexia. The results showed that pitch discrimination abilities of Chinese dyslexic children are not different from those of typically developing children. However, the former have poorer rhythm imitation abilities. Thus, in Chinese reading there is a strong relation between rhythm and reading acquisition, which is consistent with the research results on alphabetic languages. On the other hand, a significant correlation existed between the rhythm imitation ability and performance on the onset deletion test for all participants, which suggested that there was a close relation between the function of organizing the distinctive features in appropriate rhythmic pattern and the segmental phonological processing deficits of dyslexic children.
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