[Smt-talk] Dylexia and music theory/aural skills

[Eliot Handelman]

On 16/10/2011 6:59 PM, Laurel Parsons wrote:
> But anything relating to dyslexia and musical notation, musical 
> instruction, solfege, dictation, etc. would be a big help. 

Laurel,

A few years ago Isabelle Peretz presented a case study of an "amusic" 
conservatory student who had AP --
very unusual case. As I recall, the student could sing solfege correctly 
but when singing simple tunes to
a text, the tune was a complete jangle & he was not aware of it. I 
suggested that the explanation could
lie in interference between the language & music centers. I don't know 
what became of this study, or
whether it was published.

So: there MIGHT be interference effects involving music and language -- 
a music
educator is in a good position to find out. Your student might have good 
performance on
non-verbal tasks (as Finn suggested, singing "la" rather than names) vs. 
the name-retrieval issues that
classical solfege adds to the general problem of looking at a piece of 
music and figuring out what it sounds
like. In that case, it would be rather unfair to challenge her pursuit 
of music with an irrelevant obstacle.

-- eliot

---
Eliot Handelman
CIRMMT, Montreal