Effects of music on fine motor skills development

¶ … Music on Fine Motor Skills

EFFECTS of MUSIC on FINE MOTOR SKILLS

The Effects of Music on the Fine Motor Skills of Pre-School Students

This study investigated the effects of music on the fine motor skills of pre-school students. Participants included 12 students 6 boys and 6 girls from ages 3 to 5 years old. These students were exposed to 3 different conditions, party music, classical music and no music, while completing fine motor activities such as, tracing, coloring, drawing and cutting. The results were (opposed) to what was hypothesized, there was (a/not) difference in performance between the groups that listened to either genres of music or worked with no music.

Participants

Twelve students from the Cubbies Den Integrated pre-school program took part in this experiment. Six were boys and six were girls. The participants ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old. All participants were recruited for this study through an informative letter and a signed parental consent form.

Instruments

The Beery VMI, test of visual motor integration skills was used at the beginning and at the end of the study. Participants were given the same fine motor work sheets consisting of coloring, tracing, cutting and drawing tasks. A selection of party songs for kids from the popular music of Kidz Bop 19 soundtrack and the soundtrack titled Bach, Beethoven and Baby, a selection of instrumental classical music, were used for the background music.

Procedure

Participants were randomly selected into three groups. Each participant was seen individually and given and informal test using the Beery VMI, test of visual motor integration skills in order to obtain their current skill level. Each group, seen separately on three occasions, was given the same set of pre-writing worksheets and fine motor activities to complete. While engaged in the activities, group one listened to the music from Kidz Bop 19, group two listened to the soundtrack titled Bach, Beethoven and Baby, and group three did not listen to any music. After the activities on the final day, all participants were seen individually and, again, given the Beery VMI, test of visual motor integration skills.

Data Analysis

Each participant's tests were scored and compared. It was predicted that test comparison would show an increase in fine motor abilities in the two groups that listened to the music and the group that listened to the music of Kidz Bop 19 would show the highest increase.

Results

The null hypothesis for the study was that the group means for all three groups (types of music) would be equal. The alternative hypothesis for the study was that at least one of the group means would be statistically significantly different from the other group means. In other words, the study wanted to test whether the type of music (or lack thereof) that a student listened to would influence their performance on the evaluation. There were no outliers in the data, as assessed by inspection of a boxplot for values greater than 1.5 box-lengths from the edge of the box. Performance scores for performance were normally distributed for all three groups. The assumption of homogeneity of variance was also met, as assessed by Levene's Test for the Homogeneity of variances.

The sample (N = 12) was divided into three separate groups. One group listened to party music, one group listened to classical music and the final group did not listen to any music. An initial examination of the data provided the following understanding of the final motor skills performance means in each of the three groups. The students exposed to party music displayed a mean performance score of 1.25, with a standard deviation of 1.7. The students exposed to classical music displayed a mean performance of .5 with a standard deviation of 1.3. The students exposed to no music at all displayed a mean performance score of 1.5, with a standard deviation of .57.

The results of the one-way ANOVA indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the three groups of students, F (2,9) = .661, p = .540. Consequently, no post-hoc analyses were run. The lack of significant differences indicates that the study failed to reject the null hypothesis and that the alternative hypothesis could not be accepted.

Discussion

The results of the statistical analysis indicated that there were no significant differences between the groups of students with respect to their fine motor skills. Regardless of the type of music students listened to while being evaluated, their fine motor skills performance did not significantly vary. There are a number of possible explanations for these results.

The most likely explanation for the lack of significant findings in this study is the small sample size. With only 12 students in the sample, it is quite likely that the sample size simply was not large enough to detect any significant differences that may actually exist. In other words, while music and type of music may in fact have an important role to play in the performance of fine motor skills, it could be that a sample of 12 is too small to allow for the detection of a significant difference. Consequently, future research should examine this question with a larger sample size in order to determine whether a larger sample size may produce statistically significant results. In general, larger sample sizes are more likely to lead to significant results.

An alternative explanation for the findings is that there is actually no effect of music on fine motor skills development. The statistical analyses in this study would suggest this conclusion. In other words, regardless of whether a student listens to classical music, party music or no music at all, their fine motor skills remain the same. While the statistical analyses support this conclusion based on the current data, an examination of the actual group means calls this conclusion into question. The no music group and the party music group both had performance means of 1.5, while the classical music group had a group mean of .5. Simply by observing these means, it would appear that there is actually a group difference present. However, it could be that the sample size (as discussed above), is simply too small for this difference to be significant.

If there is no relationship between music and fine motor skills performance, it could be an indication that fine motor skills are unrelated to environmental factors. Perhaps fine motor skills are either innate or are a result of practice, rather than a result of extrinsic factors such as music. Future research should examine this question with a larger sample size and should also investigate the potential role that other environmental and internal factors may play. It may be that intrinsic factors are more important predictors of fine motor skills than extrinsic ones, such as motivation to practice or ability to focus. By designing a study that compares different potential influencers, it may be possible to develop a more detailed understanding of how fine motor skills develop and differ between students.