The expression “Music to my ears” could soon have an entirely different meaning to people suffering from hearing impairment.
Exposing children to music can have a worthwhile impact on hearing as is illustrated by a joint study carried out by the University College London and the University of Helsinki.
Gauging Speech-in-Noise Performance
Researchers observed 43 young kids in a 14 to 16 month study where they assessed speech-in-noise performance. 22 of the children enrolled had normal hearing while the remaining 21 had cochlear implants. The researchers recognized that children with implants had a difficult time understanding speech so they created control and test sets which assigned participants to singing and non-singing groups.
The results showed an impressive improvement in awareness and speech-in-noise performance for youngsters in the singing group versus their counterparts in the non-singing group.
Music Trains The Ear
There is a great deal of research revealing the advantages to cognitive ability and speech processing offered by musical training and this research is only one of them. In noisy environments, speech perception can be enhanced by musical training, and these findings were corroborated by a study carried out by the Montreal Neurological Institute
Identifying speech syllables through a variety of background noises was the objective of this study which used 15 musicians and 15 non-musicians.
In contrast to the research out of Helsinki and London, Drs. Yi and Robert’s study observed young adults whose ages averaged about 22-years-old. These participants had normal hearing but there was a considerable difference in results between the musicians and the non-musicians.
Non-Musicians Were Outperformed By Musicians
The two groups performed similarly under conditions without any noise, but the musicians would distinguish themselves as the study continued, outperforming non-musicians at all other signal-to-noise rates. Musicians have enhanced left interior frontal and right auditory areas of the brain which probably accounts for this ability to perform well on these tests.
But the advantages of musical training found from Drs. Yi and Robert’s study don’t just end there. The auditory motor network is refined and united to the auditory system and speech motor system by this musical training according to this study.
These adult musicians in this study had all been trained when they were younger and had at least ten years of training. This again supports the recent analysis that musical training can have a profound impact.
Beethoven’s Fight With Hearing Loss
Hearing loss has been an issue for some of the world’s most distinguished composers and musicians. Perhaps the most well-known deaf composer, Ludwig van Beethoven was born with the ability to hear, but that started to diminish while he was in his late 20s.
Although Beethoven’s young childhood musical education would be considered extreme by present standards, the groundwork of the training may have been the gateway to prolonging his career as a composer. In fact, Beethoven actually spent the last decade of his life almost completely deaf. Despite that, many of his most beloved works came during his last 15 years.
References
Can children with hearing loss benefit from music and singing?
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-musical-affects-speech.html
