Effects of grade, syllable segmentation, and speed of presentation on children's word-blending ability.

Abstract

Subsyllabic awareness was investigated with a word synthesis task. Children from kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade attempted to blend auditorily presented CCVC word segments (where C = consonant and V = vowel) to produce words. Subsyllabic segmentation and presentation rate of the word segments were varied, and the dependent measure was percentage correct in each condition. Several posttests were administered to measure the children's preexisting ability to recognize visually presented consonants, consonant clusters, rimes, and words. Second graders performed better than 1st graders, who in turn performed better than kindergarteners. Performance of all children was best on words that were segmented between onset and rime and poorest for words that were segmented into individual phonemes. Performance for word segments that were presented at the fast rate was better than for those presented at the slow rate. The authors suggest that preliterate children are able to manipulate suprasegmental units such as onset and rime, and that those units should be emphasized in early reading instruction.