The role of rhythm in learning to read in children with and without reading difficulties: an intervention study

Recent research indicates that rhythm can influence the development of phonological awareness and, thus, the learning to read. This work aimed to test the relationship between rhythm and reading in Spanish through an intervention study in children with and without reading difficulties. We used a pre-test/post-test design and worked with a sample of 131 children in the first year of primary education (29 with reading difficulties) who were randomly assigned to three groups, depending on whether they received training on phonological awareness, rhythm, or phonological awareness and rhythm. For rhythm training, exercises based on reproducing the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables of one or more words using the syllable “la” were used. In the phonological awareness-only or rhythm-only groups, mathematical exercises were also used. The results indicated that children improved in word reading in all training groups. Mediation analyses with the whole sample suggested that rhythm was related to word reading through phonological awareness. Moreover, children without difficulties improved in phonological awareness, but to a greater extent in the groups where rhythm was trained. Children with difficulties improved in reading pseudowords, but only when phonological awareness or rhythm was trained separately. These results suggest that rhythm training can facilitate the development of phonological awareness. For children with reading difficulties, rhythm training may be useful for improving the reading of novel words, but it should be done separately from phonological awareness. • Rhythm is related to word reading through phonological awareness. • Rhythm training improves phonological awareness in typically developing readers. • Rhythm training improves pseudoword reading in struggling readers. • Rhythm and phoneme awareness may be separately trained in struggling readers.