Developmental trajectories of pitch-related music skills in children with Williams syndrome.
Pitch skills in Williams syndrome grow in fits and starts—track each child’s own curve.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Martínez-Castilla et al. (2016) watched how pitch skills grow in children with Williams syndrome.
They compared the kids to typically developing peers across age groups.
The team tracked small music tasks like matching pitches and hearing tunes.
What they found
Pitch skills did not grow in a straight line in Williams syndrome.
Older kids with WS did not always score higher than younger ones.
The link between age and skill was messy, unlike the tidy climb seen in typical kids.
How this fits with other research
Elsabbagh et al. (2010) showed that children with WS can separate sounds by pitch but fail to use melody shape cues.
Pastora’s team extends that idea: even when pitch hearing starts intact, the way it improves over years is uneven.
Cornish et al. (2012) remind us to plot raw scores, not just age, to spot these disorder-specific curves.
Together the papers warn: do not trust age alone to predict music skill in WS.
Why it matters
If you test pitch skills in a child with Williams syndrome, repeat the probe across months instead of trusting a one-time age score.
Use the child’s own past scores as the yardstick, not same-age typical norms.
This guards against labeling a child as “low” when they may simply grow on a different clock.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The study of music cognition in Williams syndrome (WS) has resulted in theoretical debates regarding cognitive modularity and development. However, no research has previously investigated the development of music skills in this population. In this study, we used the cross-sectional developmental trajectories approach to assess the development of pitch-related music skills in children with WS compared with typically developing (TD) peers. Thus, we evaluated the role of change over time on pitch-related music skills and the developmental relationships between music skills and different cognitive areas. In the TD children, the pitch-related music skills improved with chronological age and cognitive development. In the children with WS, developmental relationships were only found between several pitch-related music skills and specific cognitive processes. We also found non-systematic relationships between chronological age and the pitch-related music skills, stabilization in the level reached in music when cognitive development was considered, and uneven associations between cognitive and music skills. In addition, the TD and WS groups differed in their patterns of pitch-related music skill development. These results suggest that the development of pitch-related music skills in children with WS is atypical. Our findings stand in contrast with the views that claim innate modularity for music in WS; rather, they are consistent with neuroconstructivist accounts.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.01.001