Phonological Awareness Skills in Young Boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Substantial research has detailed the reading deficits experienced by children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Although phonological awareness (PA) is vital in reading development, little is known about PA in the DMD population. This pilot study describes the PA abilities of a group of five young children with DMD, comparing the results with those of a group of children with spinal muscular atrophy and with those of a group of typically developing children. The Preschool and Primary Inventory of Phonological Awareness was used to assess the PA skills of the participants. Results indicated that the children with DMD performed significantly poorer than the typically developing group on tests of Syllable Segmentation, Rhyme Awareness, Alliteration Awareness and Phoneme Isolation and significantly poorer than the spinal muscular atrophy group on Rhyme Awareness. The findings of this pilot study indicate that children with DMD may have an increased risk of having PA difficulties, thus requiring early PA training.     

Exploring a new silent test of phonological awareness

This is the preliminary study of a test of phonologicalawareness which does not require that subjects speak or hear toparticipate. The test was designed to minimize memory loads, and tomeasure speeded written naming and segmentation-by-sound. Spelling datacan also be collected. Subjects have 45 seconds to name items in each oftwo sets of line drawings. The average frequency of the names variesacross these sets. In the third set, subjects must name the items, andalso segment the written names into their constituent sounds. This taskwas administered to disabled and normally-reading adults, with twocommon tests of phonological awareness. The new test discriminatedbetween the readers as reliably as the benchmark tasks, correlating witheach better than they correlated with each other. The new test was thenadministered to deaf adults, who performed similarly to the disabled(hearing) readers. The data represent the first direct demonstration ofphonological abilities in deaf subjects, using a task designedspecifically for that purpose.     

Phonological processing and emergent literacy in younger and older preschool children

Phonological awareness, phonological memory, and phonological access to lexical storage play important roles in acquiring literacy. We examined the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of these phonological processing abilities (PPA) in 389 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the validity of each PPA as separate from general cognitive ability and separate from each other. Multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) with mean structure demonstrated that older preschoolers have better developed latent PPA than younger preschoolers but that the structure of PPA is equivalent. RAN was found uniquely associated with letter knowledge and text discrimination in younger preschoolers, and PA was found uniquely associated with word reading skills in older preschoolers. Finally, general cognitive ability was only indirectly associated with emergent literacy via PPA. These results highlight the importance of PPA in the early literacy development of English-speaking preschool children.     

Screening of phonological awareness in the early elementary grades: an IRT approach

The purpose of the present study was to explore the possibilities for the assessment of growth in phonological awareness of children in kindergarten and first grade. Phonological awareness was measured using four sets of items involving rhyming, phoneme identification, phoneme blending, and phoneme segmentation. The results of an exploratory factor analysis and analyses conducted within the framework of item response theory showed one latent ability to underlie the different sets of items, which nevertheless differed in difficulty. Analyses in terms of the children’s ability further showed the phonological awareness measures to be sensitive to growth. The amount of information supplied by the different sets of items depended on the children’s level of ability. The conclusion that it is possible to accurately monitor the development of children’s phonological awareness in the early elementary grades appears to be justified, and this possibility opens up new perspectives for the early screening for reading problems and dyslexia.     

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.     

Contexts of reading instruction: Implications for literacy skills and kindergarteners’ behavioral engagement

This observational study examined kindergarteners’ (n = 170) exposure to literacy instruction in their classrooms (n = 36), child-by-instruction interactions, and behavioral engagement in relation to literacy skills. Time spent in four instructional contexts was coded according to who managed children's attention (teacher-managed, TM or child-managed, CM), and the content focus (basic skills such as teaching letters and their sounds, or meaning-focused such as discussing a book); children's behavioral engagement and off-task behavior were also coded live five times over the year. Word-reading and phonological awareness skills were assessed in fall and spring. Hierarchical Linear Modeling results indicated that kindergarteners with lower initial skills gained more in word-reading, but not phonological awareness, when they were exposed to relatively more time in TM basic skills instruction. In contrast, more time in CM meaning-focused instruction did not interact with initial skills to predict either outcome. Engagement analyses indicated that students were more likely to be off-task in CM than in TM contexts. Children who spent more time off-task during TM contexts had lower spring scores on both outcomes. Discussion explores the implications of this work for both literacy learning and behavioral engagement in the transition year of kindergarten.     

Graphophonemic awareness in adults after instruction in phonic generalisations

A number of studies have shown, counter-intuitively, that skilled adult readers find it difficult to correctly relate phonemes to graphemes in written words. In most adults this is of little consequence. However, teachers are required to show children how to relate phonemes to graphemes when teaching reading. This study investigated whether a brief period of instruction would improve the ability of adults in this task. Results showed a general level of improvement relative to controls. Exposure alone to the task had no effect. Improvement for the instructed group was not very large and there was difficulty relating phonemes to graphemes which had more than one letter. It may be that trainee teachers need instruction to improve knowledge of grapheme phoneme correspondence so that they can pass such knowledge onto young readers.     

Name writing but not environmental print recognition is related to letter-sound knowledge and phonological awareness in pre-readers

This paper reports a study exploring the associations between measures of two levels of phonological representation: recognition (epi-linguistic) and production (meta-linguistic) tasks, and very early reading and writing skills. Thirty-eight pre-reading Ottawa-area children, aged 4–5 years, named environmental print (EP), wrote their own name, identified correct names and EP words amongst foils and detected foil letters within EP and names. Results showed that phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge were not related to EP recognition. Name writing accuracy and name identification were related to both levels of phonological awareness. Furthermore, name writing showed a unique association with phonological awareness even after letter-sound knowledge was controlled statistically. Pre-readers may first use meta-linguistic phonological awareness in their name writing and identification prior to learning to read.     

Reading ability and memory span: Long-term memory contributions to span for good and poor readers

A number of studies have shown that childrenwith reading difficulties perform poorly ontests of verbal memory span. The extent towhich differences in memory span for good andpoor readers can be explained by differences ina long-term memory component to span as well asby differences in short-term memory processeswas investigated in this study. Memory spanand rehearsal rate were measured for high andlow frequency words and nonwords. Althoughmemory span performance for high frequencywords was comparable for all reading abilitygroups, good readers had better memory spanperformance for low frequency words. This wasattributable to differences in both short-termand long-term memory contributions to spanperformance. Differences between readingability groups also emerged when memory spanfor nonwords was measured. In this case,differences between groups also appeared to bethe result of difficulties which poor readersencountered in learning newphonologically-based materials (i.e. nonwords). The nature of the inter-relationships betweenmemory span, reading and measures ofphonological awareness are discussed in thelight of these findings.     

The influence of speech perception,oral language ability,the home literacy environment,and pre-reading knowledge on the growth of phonological sensitivity: A one-year longitudinal investigation

Individual differences in phonologicalsensitivity are among the most powerfulpredictors of early word decoding ability and adeficit in phonological sensitivity is thoughtto be the primary stumbling block for thosechildren who have difficulty learning to read. However, only recently have researchers begunto search for the potential causes andcorrelates in phonological sensitivitydevelopment. In the present one-yearlongitudinal study, the influences of speechperception, oral language ability, emergentliteracy, and the home literacy environment(HLE) on the growth of phonological sensitivitywere examined in a group of 115 four- andfive-year-old children. When the variables wereentered simultaneously into a multipleregression equation, emergent literacy, orallanguage, and the HLE contributed significantunique variance. However, when theautoregressor was controlled, only phonologicalsensitivity at Time 1 and HLE contributedsignificant unique variance to predictinggrowth in phonological sensitivity. Resultsare discussed in terms of their implicationsfor the education of preschool as well asschool-aged children.