Rhythmic Music Training’s Effect on Syntactic Structure Processing among Malay Adolescents with Syntactic Specific Language Impairment

BACKGROUND: Adolescents with syntactic specific language impairment (S-SLI) fail to comprehend which object questions. We hypothesised that rhythmic music training is more effective in treating this condition than conventional methods because music is often perceived as having a clear, isochronous beat or pulse. Thus, this study aims to investigate the effects of rhythmic music training on the syntactic structure processing of Malay which questions among native adolescents. METHODS: In this research study, the participants were three groups of Malay adolescents aged 13 years old–15 years old: i) adolescents with S-SLI with music training, ii) adolescents with S-SLI without music training and iii) typically developing adolescents. Before and after music training, the participants were given a sentence-picture matching task. Accuracy measures and reaction times were captured using E-Prime 2.0. RESULTS: The results indicated that with music training, the accuracy and reaction time associated with which object questions among the two SLI groups were significantly higher and lower, respectively. CONCLUSION: The implications of using rhythmic music training in enhancing syntactic structure processing are also discussed.