Music Therapy and Remedial Reading: Six Studies Testing Specialized Hemispheric Processing.

This paper summarizes six studies examining various facets of in formation processing in the remedial reading setting. The purpose was to determine whether dichotic presentation of vocabulary words and their definitions in one ear with music in the other would result in improved vocabulary scores. Subjects in all studies were seventh, eighth, and ninth grade students in a special reading program who were reading two to four grade levels lower than normal. Sixty vocabulary words were selected from graded vocabulary lists; 30 were used in the dichotic tape with music and the other 30 were used in both channels of the words/definitions-only tape. Sessions using dichotic tapes averaged 5 minutes in length, and all treatment sessions occurred over four consecutive classroom days. Students were pre and posttested to assess their knowledge of the vocabulary words. Each study is discussed in terms of the dichotic listening condition presented and the results obtained. Implications for future research examining hemispheric processing are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]