The problem of this study was to determine the cognitive development sequence of music skills. This sequence was determined by finding the music skills level, the Piagetian developmental level, and the developmental art level for twelve students differing in reading ability and in the first through fourth grades.The students were individually tested, using Piaget's semi-clinical interview technique. The students were tested on seven Piagetian tasks, ten music tasks, and one art task. The validity was determined through the interview process. The examiner redirected questions until he was certain the subjects were responding from conviction. The reliability of the study was achieved through a test-retest procedure and impartial expert evaluation of the test sessions.

Research questions addressed whether (1) the instruction was effective, (2) performance on persuasive tasks differed by grade level following instruction, (3) performance on persuasive tasks differed by Piagetian developmental level following instruction, and (4) whether performance differed between monolingual and bilingual subjects. Students wrote four persuasive compositions for assessment, two before instruction was administered and two after instruction. Knudson's holistic scoring rubric was used to evaluate essays for overall quality. Other measures of writing were evaluated including the number of words students used in their writing, the number of reasons included in the essay, the number of reasons per hundred words, and whether the paper had a conclusion or not. Further, the number of elaborations used in the paper was determined, as well as the number of elaborations per hundred words, and the ratio of the number of words used in elaborations compared with the total number of words in the composition.