Abstract

The primary purpose of the current study was to determine the relationship between third- and fifth-grade students' beat competencies and their reading abilities using their combined baseline nonlocomotor and locomotor movement scores and their reading scores. Beat competency was operationally defined as the ability to independently perform either microbeat or macrobeat throughout a musical selection using baseline nonlocomotor and locomotor movements. To examine further the relationship between beat competency and reading abilities, students' abilities to perform baseline nonlocomotor and locomotor movements to a steady beat and their individual relationship to reading abilities were examined separately. Effects of nonmusical factors that have been identified in the research literature as variables affecting students' reading abilities also were examined including age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and parents' education. For exploratory purposes, students' performances on the beat competency measure and their relationship with students' participation in educational programs were examined. ;Seventy-six students from four intact third- and fifth-grade classes served as subjects for the present study. Students' reading abilities were measured by Advantage Learning Systems' STAR Reading computer adaptive standardized test. The beat competency measure for the present study was an adapted form of Weikart's Beat Competence Analysis Test . ;The current study revealed significant correlations between students' composite ABCAT scores , nonlocomotor ABCAT scores , and locomotor ABCAT scores and students' reading abilities as represented by their STAR reading test scores. Because the Spearman rank-order correlations indicated inverse relationships, students with high reading scores, or high reading abilities, tended to have low beat scores which represented greater beat competency abilities, and conversely. Since the strength of the relationships between students' beat competency scores and their reading scores was moderate, the researcher concluded with caution that beat competency and reading abilities are somewhat related. ;Results of the multiple regression analysis revealed that students' IQ scores were a significant predictor of reading abilities, accounting for 37% of the variance. The combined variance, 40%, of students' IQ scores and students' nonlocomotor ABCAT scores was not a significant predictor of reading abilities. Therefore, when contributions of other nonmusical factors were considered, students' beat competency abilities were not a significant predictor of students' reading abilities