Epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness may be subject to different constraints: Evidence from Hebrew

Abstract

The study tested epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness in junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten and first-grade Hebrew native speaking children ( N= 115). The primary aim was to investigate whether children's epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness was affected by the position of the target phoneme (initial vs. final). Two epilinguistic phonological awareness tasks (initial and final phoneme recognition) and two metalinguistic tasks (initial and final phoneme isolation) were used. The findings showed that, while epilinguistic awareness for initial phonemes was higher than that for final phonemes, the opposite was true for metalinguistic awareness. The results imply that Hebrew native speaking children's metalinguistic awareness is predicated on a language-specific body-coda phonological representation. The phonological organization summoned during epilinguistic awareness tasks appears to be essentially different, however. The disjoint pattern of sensitivity for initial and final phonemes in epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness tasks suggests that the two levels of awareness are subject to different constraints, and supports their psycholinguistic independence.