Orthographic awareness,phonemic awareness,syntactic processing,and working memory skill in hyperlexic children

Children classified as hyperlexic learn to readwords spontaneously before age five, areimpaired in both reading and listeningcomprehension, and exhibit word recognitionskills above their linguistic and cognitiveabilities. Despite their strong wordrecognition skills, previous studies have shownthat the phonemic awareness skills ofhyperlexic children are low and notcommensurate with their word reading skill, inpart because of their limited comprehension of phonemic awareness tasks. Heretofore, a verylimited number of studies have investigateddirectly the orthographic processing, syntacticprocessing, and working memory skills ofchildren with hyperlexia. In the presentstudy, measures of orthographic processing,syntactic processing, and working memory skillwere administered to three hyperlexic childrenand three normally achieving readers; inaddition, measures of phonemic awareness,academic achievement, and cognitive abilitywere also administered. Results showed thatthe hyperlexic children performed aboveexpectations on the orthographic processingmeasures based on their cognitive andlinguistic abilities. The children withhyperlexia did not exhibit orthographic skillsthat were superior to the normally achievingreaders, although ceiling effects on theorthographic tasks may not have allowed them todemonstrate this skill. The three children withhyperlexia achieved lower scores than thenormally achieving readers on the syntacticprocessing measures and had great difficulty onthe phonemic awareness measures. Only one ofthe three hyperlexic children performed at alevel consistent with that of normallyachieving readers on the working memorymeasures. Findings suggest the hyperlexicchildren had levels of orthographic processingsimilar to that of normally achieving readers,read words using strategies similar to those ofnormal readers, and had phonemic awarenessskill that appears to be adequate for wordanalysis but could not be demonstrated ontraditional phonemic awareness measures.     

The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development

The aim of this study was toinvestigate the long-term effects of twodifferent training programs in kindergarten onreading development. One group received aprogram focusing on the phonological structureof words, while a second group received aprogram focusing on morphology. Both groupsalso had some print exposure focusing onphonological or morphological elementsrespectively. During their last pre-schoolyear, participants received training for 30minutes per week for a total of 17 weeks. Acontrol group received no intervention but wasregularly visited by the researcher and hadextensive print exposure. Both trained groupsshowed improvements in phonological,morphological and reading skills in comparisonto the Control Group. The effects of trainingvaried according to mother's educational level:Children of relatively highly educated mothersentered the pre-school training with betterdeveloped metalinguistic abilities thanchildren of less well educated mothers.Significant interactions between the groups andthe mother's educational level, for some of theschool reading measures, indicated thatdifferent training programs had differenteffects on different groups of children.Children of poorly educated mothers profitedthe most from metaphonological training whilechildren of highly educated mothers profitedthe most from metamorphological training.     

Training phonological awareness: a study to evaluate the effects of a program of metalinguistic games in kindergarten

A phonological awareness program was evaluated in a small-scale study using thirty eight children from three intact kindergarten classes at an American school on the outskirts of London. The average age of the children was five years four months. There was one experimental class and two control classes. The experimental class received a Danish training program of metalinguistic games and exercises. One control class used a kindergarten reading and writing program called Success in Kindergarten Reading and Writing which incorporates phonological awareness skills, but in an informal way. The other control class followed the normal kindergarten program. The results showed that the children in the experimental group and the Success in Kindergarten group had significantly greater gains in reading and spelling measures given at the end of the year. They also did better on six of the metalinguistic tests, with the experimental group showing significantly greater gains in all the tests of phoneme awareness than the other two groups. The implications of a formal versus informal phonological awareness training program are discussed.     

Distinctive patterns of relationship of phonological awareness and working memory with reading development

The purpose of this study was to assess the contributions of specific components of verbal and nonverbal working memory and of phonological awareness to the prediction of reading achievement. One hundred and three children from grades 1, 2, and 3 were administered a measure of phonological awareness, four measures of working memory, four measures of academic achievement, and a measure of verbal intelligence. Separate multiple regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, sex and verbal intelligence showed that tests of verbal memory and of direct recall significantly predicted reading and spelling achievement whereas tests of backward recall significantly predicted only pseudoword identification. Phonological awareness was also found to relate significantly to reading and spelling achievement even when working memory was partialled out. Thus, phonological awareness and measures of working memory predicted specific and significant amounts of variance in reading and spelling achievement. Further, none of these measures were specifically related to arithmetic achievement. The specific roles of phonological awareness and working memory in reading development are examined in the discussion.     

Contribution of phonological,morphological and orthographic awareness to English word spelling: A comparison of EL1 and EFL models

The purpose of the present study was to examine the contribution of metalinguistic skills—as measured through orthographic awareness, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness—to the English spelling ability of Grade 8 Chinese students who study English as a foreign language (EFL group) and of third graders in the U.S. whose first language is English (EL1 group). The two groups were initially matched through calculating the Flesch-Kincaid reading level of Chinese EFL students' textbooks and then through propensity score matching, taking into consideration various predictors. Using multiple regression and dominance analysis, we compared the models of metalinguistic awareness that predict English word spelling between the two groups. We found that orthographic awareness and morphological awareness were uniquely related to spelling for the EL1 group, whereas morphological awareness, orthographic awareness and phonological awareness were uniquely related to spelling for the EFL group, after accounting for the effect of vocabulary. Further analysis of relative importance of the predictors showed that orthographic choice was the dominant predictor for the EL1 group and inflectional morpheme production was the dominant predictor for the EFL group. The importance of metalinguistic awareness in acquiring English spelling in both EL1 and EFL groups is discussed.     

Development of phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge in young spellers: The case of inflected verbs

This study was designed to simultaneously investigate the influence of phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness skills on the ability to spell inflected verbs in structured spelling tasks. Children in grades 1, 2, and 3 (n=103) spelled inflected past and progressive tense verbs and completed awareness tasks. Developmental changes occurred in the ability to include the inflected ending, to spell the ending consistently reflecting the correct morphological unit, and to affix the ending using the correct orthographic pattern. The contributions of phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness to spelling development varied across the three grades but were similar for each sub-component, suggesting a developmental relationship between the ability to spell inflected verbs and linguistic and orthographic awareness.     

Components of phonological awareness

The factorial structure underlying different types of tasks within the domain of phonological awareness was examined in two studies. Large sample sizes allowed for sensitive differentiation of constructs. In the first study, 128 preschool children without any experience of formal reading instruction were tested with a battery of tasks intended to tap various aspects of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, syllable counting, initial-phoneme matching, initial-phoneme deletion, phoneme blending, and phoneme counting. Three basic components were extracted in a principal component analysis: a phoneme factor, a syllable factor and a rhyme factor. Cross-tabulations indicated considerable dissociation between performance on phoneme, syllable, and rhyme tasks. The structural relationships were replicated on a much larger sample (n=1509) in the second study. Subjects in this study were one year older and were attending grade 1 thus providing an opportunity to test their reading achievement. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the phonemic factor was by far the most potent predictor. However, the rhyming factor made an independent (although small) contribution to explaining the reading variance. Among the phonemic tasks, phoneme identification proved to be the most powerful predictor.     

The role of different levels of phonological awareness in the development of reading and spelling in Greek

Phonological awareness is a strong predictor of children's progress in literacy acquisition. There are different ways of segmenting words into sound sequences – syllables, phonemes, onset-rime – and little is known about whether these different levels of segmentation vary in their contribution to reading and writing. Does one of them – for example, phoneme awareness – play the major role in learning to read and spell making the other phonological units irrelevant to the prediction of reading? Or do different levels of analysis make independent contributions to reading and spelling?

Our study investigated whether syllable and phoneme awareness make independent contributions to reading and spelling in Greek. Four measures were used: syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, reading and spelling. Analyses of variance showed that Greek speaking children found it easier to analyse words into syllables than phonemes, irrespective of the influence of task variables such as position of the phonological element, word length, and placement of stress in the word. Regression analyses showed that syllable and phoneme awareness make significant and independent contributions to learning written Greek. We conclude that phonological awareness is a multidimensional phenomenon and that the different dimensions contribute to reading and writing in Greek.

     

The necessity of the alphabetic principle to phonemic awareness instruction

This investigation examined the extent to whichcurricular choice and incorporation of phonemicawareness (PA) into the kindergarten curriculumaffects growth in kindergarten literacy skillsand first-grade reading and spelling outcomesin 114 classrooms in 32 Title 1 schools for4,872 children (85% African American). Literacy curricula were described as havingmore or less teacher choice and more or less PAand were implemented with ongoing professionaldevelopment. Observations of curriculumfidelities and ratings of student behavior werealso obtained. Alphabetic instruction withoutPA was not as effective as alphabeticinstruction with PA. However, effectiveinstruction in PA and alphabetic codingappeared to be as much a consequence of ongoingprofessional development as it was a functionof prescribed PA activities. Results providelarge-scale classroom support for findings onPA reported by the National Reading Panel[(2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-basedassessment of the scientific research literature onreading and its implications for reading instruction.Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health andHuman Development].     

Levels of phonological awareness and learning to read

The paper reports studies of segmentation performance by a Nursery group of children, who had not yet started to learn to read, and by Primary 1 and 2 groups, who were in the early stages of learning by a standard method of whole word acquisition combined with letter-sound learning. Rhyme and alliteration production tasks were applied, together with segmentation tasks requiring division of monosyllabic words or non-words of simple or complex structure into two parts, three parts, or as many parts as possible. Performance was related to the hierarchical model of the syllable which distinguishes a two-dimensional (2D) level (onset/rime), a three-dimensional (3D) level (initial consonants, vowel, terminal consonants) and many-dimensional (nD) level (phonemes). The hypothesis that phonological awareness (PA) normally develops down the hierarchy, from larger to smaller units, predicts that segmentation ability should emerge in the sequence 2D 3D nD. In practice, the reverse of this order was found. The results are discussed in relation to theories of the relationship between literacy development and the different levels of PA.     

Clinical appraisal of spelling ability and its relationship to phonemic awareness (blending,segmenting, elision,and reversal), phonological memory,and reading in reading disabled,ADHD, and normal children

Seventy-eight 8-to-12-year-old children (34 ReadingDisabled; 31 Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disordered; and 13diagnosed normal controls) were given a battery oftests including cognitive, linguistic, academic,phonemic awareness, and memory tests. As part of theacademic battery an 8-point spelling rating scale wasdeveloped (Rating Scale) that resulted in threedifferent scores which reliably discriminated amongthe three groups. Relationships between phonemicawareness, phonological memory, reading and spellingwere explored. Zero-order and second-ordercorrelations were completed with indications thatphonemic awareness tasks (elision, blending, reversal,and segmenting) and phonological memory (WISC-IIIDigit Span) are significantly correlated with readingdecoding and spelling measures with slightly highercorrelations with the Rating Scale. Regressionanalyses resulted in a large proportion of thevariance on reading and spelling tasks accounted forby phonemic awareness (particularly elision andreversal) and phonological memory. The ReadingDisabled group was found to produce more errors thatwere phonetically inaccurate than the other twogroups. The demand of spelling ten ``error' wordsbeyond the RD students' achievement level appeared toelicit greater weaknesses in their phonologicalrecoding abilities than in those of the ADHD ornormally achieving students.     

Speech development patterns and phonological awareness in preschool children

To examine the association between speech production and early literacy skills, this study of 102 preschool children looked at phonological awareness in relation to whether children were delayed, typical, or advanced in their articulation of consonants. Using a developmental typology inspired by some of the literature on speech development (Kahn and Lewis, The Kahn-Lewis phonological analysis, 1986; Shriberg, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36(1):105-140, 1993a), we found that failure to master the early-8 consonants and a greater prevalence of certain types of production errors were associated with deficient phonological awareness. We also found that children who made no consonant errors had advanced phonological awareness relative to other children in the sample. In all cases, both productive speech patterns and speech errors were more closely linked with rhyme awareness than with phoneme awareness. The association between speech production and rhyme awareness may provide some new directions for the early preschool assessment of risk for reading problems.     

Processing of phonological,orthographic and cross-modal word representations among adult dyslexic and normal readers

This study examined the extent to which adultdyslexic readers exhibit concurrent deficitsfor phonological, orthographic and cross-modalword representations, and the relationshipbetween these deficits and decoding ability.Participants were 18 phonological dyslexics and19 normal readers at college level. Compared tonormal readers, dyslexics exhibitedsignificantly slower reaction times acrosstasks, and were less accurate on the unimodalorthographic task. Word pattern processing wasmore extensively related to decoding abilityamong dyslexic as compared to normal readers,but more robustly related to baseline measuresof phonological and orthographic processingamong normal readers. The results are discussedin the context of integrating the phonologicaland orthographic aspects of words, speed ofprocessing deficits, and the importance of taskselection when assessing adult dyslexicpopulations.     

The role of phonological and syntactic awareness in second-language reading: The case of Spanish-speaking learners of French

Spanish-speaking learners of French, aged 9 to 11 years old, were tested after approximately 7months of French instruction to explore the contribution of phonological and syntactic awareness in L2 in 4 components of L2 reading, taking oral competence in L2 andreading in L1 into account. Phonological tasksin L2 better explain decoding. Word recognitionthrough the visual route is best explained bythe corresponding ability in L1. Sentencecomprehension is best explained by oralcompetence in L2, although it is stronglycorrelated with syntactic awareness. Finally,text comprehension is explained by thecorresponding ability in L1, althoughcorrelations with syntactic awareness and oralcompetence are strong. Theoretical implicationsare derived from these findings, and questionsrelative to the subjects' age and level ofbilingualism as well as methodological issuesare discussed.     

The effects of syllable instruction on phonemic awareness in preschoolers

Purpose

Preschooler instruction for speech sound awareness typically teaches a progression of speech units from sentences to phonemes, ending at simple first phoneme activities. This study investigates the effects of teaching advanced tasks of phoneme blending and segmenting with and without the larger speech unit of the syllable.

Method

Thirty-nine 4-5-year-old typically developing children received twice-weekly small-group instruction in three conditions: two weeks of syllable tasks then four weeks of multiple phoneme tasks (SP), four weeks of multiple phoneme tasks only (MP), or an active control condition of first phoneme instruction (FP).

Results

The conditions SP and MP showed large significant gains on blending and segmenting and no significant differences on first phoneme isolating compared to the FP condition. A comparison of SP and MP did not show significant differences on phoneme blending and segmenting, but SP showed significantly more confusion during early sessions of phoneme instruction.

Conclusion

This preliminary evidence suggests that preschoolers can improve understanding of phoneme blending and segmenting, without first being taught syllable blending and segmenting, and with no negative effects on first sound awareness. These findings support a more efficient way of teaching preschoolers awareness of the individual sounds of speech. Replication with a larger sample, including children at-risk for literacy difficulties, is recommended before firm conclusions should be drawn.     

Is it misspelled or is it mispelled? The influence of fresh orthographic information on spelling

The effect of exposure to incorrectly and correctly spelled words on subsequent spelling performance was examined as a function of spelling proficiency and of time lapse between exposure and test. Spelling accuracy was found to be respectively depressed and enhanced by such exposure, relative to performance on unexposed control words. The effect was persistent and pervasive, obtaining at both immediate and one-week delayed testing and in both good and poor spellers. The findings indicate that fresh orthographic information exerts an influence on pre-existing abstract orthographic representations, rather than establishing new episodic traces, and that this process takes place implicitly.     

The relationship between speech impairment,phonological awareness and early literacy development

Although children with speech impairment are at increased risk for impaired literacy, many learn to read and spell without difficulty. Around half the children with speech impairment have delayed acquisition, making errors typical of a normally developing younger child (e.g. reducing consonant clusters so that spoon is pronounced as ‘poon’). A smaller group make disordered speech errors that are atypical of normal development (e.g. marking all consonant clusters with /f/ so bread is pronounced as ‘fed’). Profiles of surface speech errors may provide a way of identifying underlying deficits that account for differences in literacy development. This paper investigates the relationship between type of speech impairment, phonological awareness and literacy acquisition. Thirteen children, aged 5;2–7;9, with either delayed or disordered speech and six typically developing controls were compared on tasks measuring onset-rime awareness, letter knowledge, phonological rule knowledge, real and non-word reading. Children with delayed speech development performed like typically developing controls on all phonological awareness and reading measures. Children with speech disorder, who consistently made errors atypical of normal development, had difficulties on all phonological awareness tasks with the exception of syllable awareness. They showed no measurable emergent reading ability. The results suggest the need to differentiate between speech delay and disorder when planning intervention, particularly for literacy skills.     

Knowledge of the alphabet and explicit awareness of phonemes in pre-readers: The nature of the relationship

This study was carried out to examine the extent to which preschool children are aware of the phonemic structure of the spoken word and to investigate how they acquire that knowledge. The four year old non-readers carried out a battery of takss designed to assess product name reading ability, knowledge of the alphabet, rhyme skills and explicit phonemic awareness ability. There was evidence that they generally acquired knowledge of the alphabet before they showed explicit phonemic awareness ability. Fixed order regression analyses showed that ability to read and write the alphabet generally accounted for unique variance in phoneme awareness and product name reading ability over and above that accounted for by rhyme skills but that rhyme ability accounted for no unique variance beyond that accounted for by alphabet knowledge. Further analyses showed that alphabet knowledge also contributed unique variance to product name reading ability over and above that accounted for by phonemic awareness ability but that the reverse was not the case. It was hypothesised that many preschool non-readers may start to gain an insight into the phonemic structure of the spoken word by becoming aware of the connection between the sounds of letters in environmental print and the sounds of the spoken word.     

Levels of phonological awareness in preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children

Evidence of phonological awareness levels usually comes from English-speaking children. The evidence in Spanish is scarce. The present study examined the phonological awareness of syllables, onsets–rimes, and phonemes, extending the Treiman and Zukowski (1991) results to preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children. The sample comprised preschoolers, kindergarteners and first-graders. Children found syllables easier than onset–rime units, and onset–rime units easier than phoneme units (Experiments 1 and 2). Preliterate children found ending units easier than beginning units. However, literate children were best at initial linguistic units, particularly initial syllables. Results on the phonological awareness task and on the masked priming lexical decision task support that the phonological awareness development is sensitive to the orthographic units used by children from the time they begin to read (Experiment 3). For all children, initial continuant consonants were easier than stop consonants.