Training Teachers about Entrainment: The Unstressed Tie between Rhythmic Skills and Reading

By Michael D. Mroz, School of Education, University of Illinois Springfield

What exactly do teachers learn about the science of reading? What cognitive processes does successful reading share with other human competencies, and likewise, what can be said when reading ability is not all it could be? Since the 2000s, university departments of education have made noticeably positive strides in preparing teachers to teach reading. During the decades prior, though, many such departments regrettably embraced the rise of the Whole Language approach (Goodman, 1981), which believed reading acquisition to be an activity analogous to early language learning; that if children are simply immersed in a culture of reading within their classroom, they will eventually become sufficiently literate. One of several reasons why this approach did not pan out is that reading is an extremely multifaceted behavior stemming from a variety of skills and know-how. A theory of reading acquisition ought to acknowledge that a child must successfully draw upon different mental processes to perform specific kinds of reading tasks, that these capacities are likely to change throughout their development, and finally that these features vary from child to child (Seidenberg et al., 2020). In light of this, pre-service teachers are not commonly made aware, in their programs, of one particular domain-specific feature deeply tied to the science of reading; a feature grounded in the seemingly disparate disciplines of music psychology and music education. This paper puts forth the idea that a comprehensive curriculum to train pre-service teachers in the science of reading ought to make mention of the academic literature that links poor musical-rhythmic propensities with reading struggles. More specifically, teacher-training programs can better prepare pre-service reading interventionists to confront issues like developmental dyslexia, by incorporating research in psychology and neuroscience. Lastly, the rhythm-reading connection is relevant to a wide variety of educators, including interdisciplinary educators, as it asks them to consider broadly what role the body might play in the acquisition of skills that are often considered purely mental.

Dyslexia and its Consequences

As it turns out, those who lack a particular kind of bodily and auditory proficiency called, “rhythmic entrainment” (the ability to synchronize with an external pulse), often exhibit symptoms of developmental dyslexia. According to the International Dyslexia Association Ontario, “Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language…” (What is Dyslexia?, n.d., para. 2). Unsurprisingly, this difficulty in phonological processing can have a substantial negative impact on academic achievement. Duff (2022) found that second grade children with dyslexia showed considerably lower performance in both reading and mathematics than their non-dyslexic peers. Moreover, the traits typically associated with dyslexia tend to carry on into adulthood and often have an impact on workplace performance and achievement. According to de Beer et al. (2014), “In the context of work DD (developmental dyslexia) affects nearly all domains of functioning, mostly in a negative way. Within each domain the impact of DD increases over the course of life” (Abstract: Conclusions, para.1).

More on Rhythmic Entrainment and Reproduction

Understanding more about the ability to do entrainment, from a biological point of view, might help shed light on a partial underlying cause of developmental dyslexia. Given that entrainment is a ubiquitous skill among the human population, there are many evolutionarily-based hypotheses attempting to explain it. Some scholars take a kinesthetic approach. To Brown (2022), for example, entrainment arose from group dancing, whereby bodily percussion offered a sensory-motor connection between sound production and synchrony. Other hypotheses involve features of speech-matching. A study by B o w l i n g et al. (2013), for instance, had participants read gibberish phrases alone and with partners; the authors found that participants in pairs had greater consistency of duration between spoken phrases than did participants alone. This suggests, according to the authors, that such rhythmic synchronicity may exist in order to foster cooperative social interaction. Many researchers have noted the deep biological similarities between musical rhythm and speech rhythm. As Patel (2006) states:

One area of overlap concerns perceptual grouping, the mental clustering of events into units (e.g., phrases) at different hierarchical levels. Grouping in music and speech shows many similarities. Music and language mark group boundaries in similar ways using…durational lengthening, and cross-domain sensitivity to these grouping cues starts early in life. (p. 99)

Patel considers the possibility that musical grouping abilities emerged from certain aspects of speech rhythm. On the other hand, the act of mimicking a rhythm after it is played is referred to as rhythmic reproduction or rhythmic sequencing. Sequencing is similar to entrainment but it incorporates short-term memory. Tierney et al. (2017), in particular, found that participants’ ability to sequence rhythms was associated with verbal memory (p. 864). What, then, can be made of those who cannot keep a beat? With the exception of roughly 3% of the population who seem to be entirely “beat deaf“(Phillips-Silver et al., 2011), poor rhythmic entrainment is not a clear-cut deficit; rather, individuals generally exhibit a spectrum of synchronization-related impairments. According to Tranchant et al. (2016), on average, clapping entrainment is easier than dancing with a group, while tapping to a metronome is easier than to music. Whatever the genesis of this kind of beat conformity, there is little doubt that it is intricately interwoven with language processing.

Rhythmicity, Decoding Issues, and Reading Remedies

The link between dyslexia and poor musical-rhythmic skills is well established. The association was first discovered by Stambak (1951), where kindergarten students were asked to interpret differently-spaced groupings of asterisks written on a piece of paper, as rhythms to be tapped out. For instance, three consecutive asterisks should be tapped as three consecutive beats, while three asterisks each with a space in between should be tapped the same way, but with rests after every beat. Stambak found dyslexic students scored less well than did traditional readers in this rhythmic reproduction task. The mistranslation of visual symbols into audio output is not the end of the story, though. Reading impairment is also related to the misinterpretation of audio input. Tallal (1980) found that reading-challenged students fared worse than the control group in a battery of temporal order audio perception tests. While there was no difference in the two groups’ perceptions of tones at slower rates, the two groups diverged as the rate at which the tones were played increased. This is directly related to reading-impaired students’ poor ability to detect speech sounds, or phonemes: “c”-”a”-”t,” for example, a certain kind of phonological awareness. These speech sounds are said at an extremely rapid rate – approximately 30 ms (Iyer, 2002, p. 401). A study by Overy (2003) revealed that dyslexic children scored lower on 7 out of 9 tests of musical timing skills than the traditionally-reading control group. Furthermore, the author stated that “an interesting correlation was found between spelling ability and the skill of tapping out the rhythm of a song, which both involve the skill of syllable segmentation” (p. 18). Dellatolas (2009) found that the better kindergarten students performed on a rhythm reproduction task, the better their reading ability in the second grade. Similarly, Tierney and Kraus (2013) found a correlation between a participant’s ability to tap in synchrony with a beat, and different sub-skills involved in reading.

It is clear from this work that there is an association between reading and rhythmic aptitude, but what does the literature say about whether training one aspect will improve the other? Bhide et al. (2013) found that at-risk readers, upon tapping along to a beat, tended to tap prior to each beat in an attempt to predict when it would occur, instead of naturally entraining with it. The authors found a significant correlation between improved tapping ability and improved reading fluency, but due to a lack of a control group and a small sample size, the authors could not show a causal effect. Nevertheless, the authors tested rhythmic tapping as a reading intervention and deemed it successful as such: “This small-scale intervention study suggests that a theoretically-driven musical intervention based on rhythm and on linking metrical structure in music and language can have benefits for the development of literacy and phonological awareness” (p. 120). The first randomized controlled trial of the effect of music training on reading ability found that the musically-trained group, consisting of severely dyslexic children, showed a noted improvement in reading accuracy compared to the control. Additionally, the authors claim, “the improvement in rhythmic reproduction was a good predictor of the improvement in phonological abilities. This supports the hypothesis of a causal role of rhythm-based processing for language acquisition and phonological development” (Flaugnacco et al., 2015). Zooming out to the macro-level, a systematic review of music-based interventions for dyslexia found that out of 23 studies, “Twenty-one of the studies reported positive effectiveness of interventions and two studies reported mixed results” (Rolka & Silverman, 2015, p. 8). Finally, the most recent literature review on music and dyslexia discovered that:

…musical and auditory interventions, designed to address the DD-related phonological deficits, yielded a beneficial effect on reading to some extent. The comparison between musical/auditory training programs and standard, language-based only, remediation approaches revealed – in most cases – comparable efficacy…Therefore, such findings support the hypothesis of a transfer effect of musical/auditory training on phonological skills. (Cancer & Antonietti, 2022, sect. 7)

One limitation of the aforementioned intervention studies is that some do not make a clear distinction between music in general, and rhythm, specifically. In either case, though, the results display an unavoidable relationship with general phonological processing – a vital sub-skill in reading. In addition, while many important questions remain unanswered, taken together, this work points to a highly overlooked analogy in human cognition.

An Unstressed Tie

Unfortunately, very few teachers are aware of the analogy between poor rhythmic entrainment and dyslexia, let alone the fact that musical-rhythmic interventions can improve phonological awareness in dyslexic students. The truth is, teachers’ general conceptions of dyslexia tend to be mixed. According to Knight (2018), most teachers felt that the subject of dyslexia was “not covered well at all” in their teacher training. In more detail, Knight found that a majority of teachers gain their understanding of dyslexia at the level of behavior, instead of at the more fundamental levels of biology and cognition. Relatedly, almost 17% of teachers claim that dyslexia is primarily a vision-related deficit (Knight, 2018) even though the evidence for this is lacking (Thorwrath, 2014) (Wadlington & Wadlington 2005) (Washburn et al., 2013). Perhaps a partial reason why dyslexia issues persist as they do is a lack of scientific understanding among educators of the different abilities that play a role in successful reading. Beyond the narrow subject of dyslexia, scientific knowledge of reading acquisition among teachers, in general, falls short. A systematic review by Meeks et al. (2016) on the extent to which pre-service teachers were prepared to teach reading showed that:

If the studies reviewed are representative of teacher education courses generally, it would appear that scientifically-based methods for the teaching of early literacy, including the systematic and direct instruction of phonemic awareness…may not be included in sufficient depth in many PST education programs. (p. 21)

Likewise, Tortorelli et al. (2021) reviewed 27 studies consisting of assessments of teacher knowledge of phonological, phonemic, and morphological concepts. The researchers discovered that pre-service teachers answered only 50-60% of the items correctly. Given these numbers, it is easy to see how pre-service teachers might be under-informed about the science of dyslexia. In response, Anderson (2021) calls for the addition of neuroscience and developmental psychology in teacher training curricula. Anderson asserts that while there have been concerted efforts to turn neuroscientific and psychological findings into practice-based approaches that teachers can use, these findings are not often taught in tandem with the practical methods. As the author adds, “There is a clear role for the presentation of interdisciplinary scientific information on reading development and evidence-based reading practices for dyslexia across education, neuroscience, and psychology fields” (para. 12).

What, then, can be made of the prevalence of the rhythm-reading connection in elementary teacher training programs? Of course, it cannot be ruled out that this concept remains entirely absent from teacher preparation curricula. However, because there is a paucity of the “why” with regard to reading difficulties, on the whole, it is reasonable to conclude that it is, at most, underemphasized. In any case, the extent to which this interdisciplinary notion is taught to pre-service and even in-service teachers is not in proportion to the rich body of research literature on the subject. With this in mind, education faculty ought to incorporate consistently this literature into modules having to do with phonological and phonemic awareness, dyslexia, or reading interventions. Even if teachers are not solely responsible for performing interventions for struggling readers themselves, and even if a rhythm-based intervention would not end up being successful for said students, teachers still deserve exposure to this body of research in their coursework. Such exposure would provide them with a deeper possible explanation for their students’ reading difficulties; and failing to instill in teachers the potential for a bird’s-eye-view in this way, I argue, is to devalue the profession, even only if implicitly and slightly. In agreement with Knight (2018), “…the blame here should not lie with the teachers, but rather with the education institution for not ensuring that teachers are entering the workforce with adequate knowledge…” (Discussion, para. 3).

Entrainment and The Body beyond Teacher Education

Pre-service elementary teachers and reading interventionists are not the only ones who would benefit, on the job, from understanding how entrainment and basic rhythmic skills interact with linguistic adeptness. Teachers of high school language arts and professors of English composition, for example, could use this information to teach best practices of punctuation. According to Sopher (1977):

I propose to put forward a view that speech rhythm…should in fact constitute the basis of sound punctuation…it is the failure to recognize this principle that has led those writers to recommend a system of punctuation which tends to be convention-bound and mechanical rather than natural and meaningful. (p. 304)

As the author states, one feature that makes writing agreeable is its rhythmic aspect; its punctuation, which ought to be grounded in the natural rhythm of speech, and not in arbitrary prescriptions. Of course, the meaning of the sentence must also be considered, but educators who choose to endorse such a view, might ask students to read a sentence aloud from one of their papers, and then tap out the rhythm of the way they vocalized that sentence. Pauses or “rests” in the rhythm, would indicate a natural place for a comma, for instance. It is still an open research question whether difficulties in rhythmic entrainment and reproduction are correlated with poor punctuation in prose; but this simple technique is one well worth considering by writing teachers, especially those who are interested in interdisciplinary teaching and learning techniques.

While entrainment may not have a tight-knit relationship to every academic discipline, there is an idea that bodily action, broadly construed, can influence the way one thinks about abstract material. This is related to a rich research area known as, “embodied cognition.” According to Wilson & Foglia (2015), “Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent’s body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing” (para. 1). Notions of embodiment even show up in subjects like mathematics.

A basic and unsurprising instance of embodied mathematics is the act of counting on the fingers to solve arithmetic problems, which is often seen in children (Fischer & Brugger, 2011). Segal (2011) used a gestural interface to compare children’s “tapping” vs “sliding” techniques for solving different math problems. The authors found that tapping worked best for solving discrete content, while sliding was most successful for problems having to do with estimation. Tapping has implications for teaching more complex mathematical concepts, too. Tran et al. (2017) discuss the use of gesturally-based software that helps algebra students internalize the concept of a slope. According to the authors, the technology was:

designed to experience the difference in slope as a tapping tempo, providing the embodied experience of slope as a literal rate over time. Tapping influences the vertical movement such that faster tapping creates more steepness and, by having embodied control of this mathematical process, students can internalize that slope is about a vertical change over a specific horizontal distance. (A case illustration of Tap Tempo, para. 2).

Such educational technology ought to inspire pedagogues to examine closely the mapping between a learner’s mental representation of a concept, and the way they enact that representation in the world around them.

Conclusion

Whether it pertains to elementary teachers, English professors, or tutors of mathematics, it is apparent that entrainment and bodily action play a role in learning content that is commonly thought about as merely mental. In the case of teacher education, there ought to be a larger interdisciplinary conversation that would welcome theoretical knowledge of various kinds (psychological, kinesthetic, neuroscientific, etc.) into teacher training programs. It may be argued that these features are, indeed, covered; but when balancing them with pragmatic, in-the-classroom training, it should be expected that they comprise only a small fraction of the overall coursework. Nevertheless, a theoretical understanding with respect to the relatedness between rhythmic skills and dyslexia, specifically, could serve as a humble but discernible point at which teachers might more pervasively think from “first principles” about other pressing issues in elementary education. Finally, as I have shown, knowledge about entrainment and embodiment, more generally, offers educators of all kinds, a fresh paradigm by which they may see how their students approach and grasp different scholastic problems.

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