Effects of music therapy on verbal memory skills and phonological awareness in greek children with dyslexia

Dyslexic children often have significant deficits in verbal memory skills and exhibit lower skill levels in verbal memory tasks. Music therapy is considered as an educational strategy that seems to improve linguistic skills of people with educational needs. Based on this we conducted an intervention so as to find out if music therapy can be beneficial in verbal memory skills of children with dyslexia. For this research we chose the quantitative research method, using the standardized test RAVLT (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test) and the ATHENA Test. The sample of the research consisted of 26 children, from which 13 took part in music therapy programs in a speech therapy centre, whereas 13 consisted the control group. All the children were 5-12 years old. The results of the present showed that children who have attended the music therapy group had better performance in verbal learning in all words that have been set by the researcher. According to the results music therapy can enhance their short verbal memory skills.