Abstract

Phonological awareness, or consciousness of speech sounds and operational skill with them, develops in the order word > syllable > phoneme, over the ages of four to seven. Among the various types of phonological awareness tasks, the deletion task has a higher level of difficulty because it requires operation and deletion of sounds within words. This task also has a high correlation with reading proficiency. This study utilized a deletion task with 20 questions to see how operational development depended on age and gender. The deletion task, with 20 questions, was tested on four- to six-year old children developing normally (N = 90). The results showed that phonological awareness performance improved with age. This age effect was not accompanied by a gender effect; age and gender interacted. The study confirmed the development of phonological awareness in four- to six-year-old children who were developing normally. The deletion task can be used to effectively detect the risk of difficulties with phonological awareness in preschoolers with speech, language, and reading problems.

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