Preschool and school-age musicality measures predict school-age communication and social communication, explaining up to 6% of phenotypic variance, while infant nursery-rhyme measures explain less than 1%¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Preschool and school-age musicality measures explain up to 6% of phenotypic variance in school-age communication and social communication measures after covariate correction. → Lucía de Hoyos 2025 q2 i? Infant nursery-rhyme measures explain less than 1% of variance in the outcome measures and were not taken forward. → Lucía de Hoyos 2025 (2)

Evidence¶

Lucía de Hoyos 2025¶

Lucía de Hoyos, Ellen Verhoef, Aysu Okbay, Janne R. Vermeulen, Celeste Figaroa, Miriam Lense, Simon E. Fisher, Reyna L. Gordon & Beate St Pourcain. (2025). Preschool musicality is associated with school-age communication abilities through genes related to rhythmicity. npj Science of Learning 10:39. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-025-00329-y

q2 · i? · associational · r3

Single-predictor regression analyses in the ALSPAC cohort (N = 4169–6737 per measure) comparing reduced and full models; associations passed the multiple-testing threshold of p < 0.000324, with musicality measures explaining "up to 6% of the phenotypic variance" in communication outcomes. Incremental R2 was the reported statistic; no standardised effect size was printed.

"Aftercorrecting for covariates (sex, age and the first ten ancestry-informative principal components, see Methods), preschool and school-age musicality measures explained up to 6% of the phenotypic variance in school-age communication and social commu- nication measures"

Lucía de Hoyos 2025 (2)¶

Lucía de Hoyos, Ellen Verhoef, Aysu Okbay, Janne R. Vermeulen, Celeste Figaroa, Miriam Lense, Simon E. Fisher, Reyna L. Gordon & Beate St Pourcain. (2025). Preschool musicality is associated with school-age communication abilities through genes related to rhythmicity. npj Science of Learning 10:39. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-025-00329-y

q2 · i? · associational · r3

The same regression screen in ALSPAC showed the two infant nursery-rhyme measures (0.5 and 1.5 years) fell below 1% explained variance; the article reports they were "not taken forward in subsequent analysis" and were excluded from later SEM models.

"infant musicality measures (nursery rhymes) explained less than 1% of the variance in the outcome measures (Supplementary Fig. 1) and were, thus, not taken forward in subsequent analysis."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Phenotypic and genetic associations with musicality are robust to genetic confounding via educational attainment — related
• Latent musicality correlates moderately with speech-related communication (r = 0.50) and modestly with cognition (r = 0.33), but not with pragmatic or social-communication factors — related
• Polygenic scores for adult rhythmicity validate ALSPAC preschool and school-age musicality measures, extending genetic associations with rhythmicity to an earlier developmental window — related
• Polygenic scores for rhythmicity associate with school-age speech-related communication and verbal-cognition outcomes, with two associations passing multiple-testing correction and four at the nominal level
• Genetic variation shared with rhythmicity does not account for the association between preschool musicality and school-age verbal cognition
• The association between preschool musicality and school-age speech-related communication is partially accounted for by polygenic scores for rhythmicity