Ritva Torppa,1,2 Valerie Looi,3,4 Elisabet Kaila,1 Seija Pekkala1
1Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, 2Cognitive Brain Research Unit, University of Helsinki, 3 SCIC_A Service of RIDBC. 4Advanced Bionics, Asia Pacific
Tiivistelmä julkaisussa “Program of the 2nd International Music & CI Symposium. Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, August 20th-21th, 2018”
Introduction: The amount of music training or informal musical activities can affect the perception of music, speech in noise, as well as language skills of both children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH).1,2 We compared the amount of informal music involvement at home and formal musical activities outside of the home between children with CIs and those with NH, and studied what considerations may underlie any differences found. For instance, do parental expectations on the potential of their child having a career in music, or the music enjoyment levels of children with CIs result in a shift of engagement with music. We also studied the connections of musical activities to the semantic word fluency performance.
Methods: Parents of 2- to 5-year-old children with CIs and NH filled in an anonymous online Role of Music in Families Questionnaire (RMFQ) in Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Finland. The RMFQ was based on a questionnaire by Driscoll and colleagues.3 We collected information on: childhood music participation and experiences (e.g., singing or playing informally at home or in groups in daycare or elsewhere, informal music listening), attitudes and reactions toward music, music enjoyment, music resources at home, expectations on the child’s future involvement in music, and importance of music in the family. In Finland only, the parents were required to measure the semantic word fluency performance of the child (i.e., how many animals and clothes the child retrieves during 60 seconds). Differences between groups in the level of music participation were analyzed with Chi-square (Fisher’s exact test). Connection of the word fluency performance to singing was analyzed with partial correlations controlling for age and maternal education. The methods and results for music enjoyment, appreciation, expectations, and connections of them to the level of musical activities will be reported in the symposium.
Preliminary Finnish results: 177 families of children with NH and 12 families of children with CIs completed the questionnaire. The Chi-square results for the level of music participation at home or outside of the home indicated no differences between CI and NH groups. The level of informal musical activities at home was high. 100 % of the children with CIs and 97 % of the children with NH danced spontaneously at home (on average, CI, 4-6 x per week; NH, 2-3 x per week). 100 % of the children with CIs and 99 % of the children with NH created music performance during play (on average 4-6 x per week). Many parents sang for their children face to face daily (CI, 67 %; NH, 55 %). 91 % of the families of children with CIs and 73 % of the families of children with NH had organized musical activities at home (on average 1 x per week). Many children sang at home by themselves daily (CI, 58 %; NH, 62 %). Both groups sang on average more than 4-6 x per week. The level of musical activities outside of the home was not as high as the level of informal musical activities. 83% of the children with CIs and 75 % of the children with NH sang in groups, but on average only once in a week. 33 % of the children with CIs and 40 % of the children with NH played in groups once in a week on average. None of the children with CIs and 15 % of the children with NH participated in singing or playing lessons (on average once in a week). None had music therapy but all children with CIs had speech therapy. Some parents of the children with CIs reported that they had obtained information on the benefits from musical activities from the Internet or professionals, and for this reason they had increased the number of musical activities at home. In all children with NH, the word fluency performance was associated to more parental singing (face to face with the child) (p = .002), and at the age of 4 years and older, to more singing by the children themselves (p = .040). From the children with CIs, only 4 children were able to carry out the task. Therefore, the associations could not be analyzed.
Conclusions: In Finland, the level of music participation of the children with CIs is similar to the children with NH. The level of informal musical activities at home is higher than the level of musical activities outside of the home. Singing, dancing, and creating music performances during play at home are the most typical musical activities of the Finnish children. The results also indicate that singing has potential to improve the word fluency performance.