Repeated studies have demonstrated that studying music aids reading comprehension, especially in children. A study conducted in Downy, Calif., quoted on the Chicago Journalist website, found that first-graders with just one year of music education were reading at a level nearly an entire grade level more advanced than their peers, and some were reading at as high as the fourth- or fifth-grade level. Other studies have shown that high school musicians score, on average, 64 points higher on the SAT test than do their non-musicians classmates.
Reading comprehension is not the only academic ability that is aided by studying music. Musicians outscore non-musicians on the SAT math portion by 43 points. In addition, the National Center for Education Statistics has found that musicians get more A's and B's than do their peers, while researchers in Australia have shown that students who study music at an early age have increased abilities in reading comprehension, spelling, math, learning ability, listening ability and motor skills, again according to Chicago Journalist.
Non-musicians can still benefit from music simply by listening to it. Although conventional wisdom holds that listening to music is a distraction, numerous studies, according to the Missouri Western State University site, have contradicted this belief. Students who habitually listen to music while studying were found to perform significantly better at reading comprehension tests than students who did not, especially when presented with distractions.
However some studies, like one from Sweden cited on Sage Journals Psychology of Music, show students performing more poorly on reading comprehension tests while listening to music. The key difference seems to be that students who did not do well on the tests were listening to music that they did not enjoy. It is believed, therefore, that the best way to boost your reading comprehension is to listen to what you like best, whatever that may be.