Structure of phonological ability at age four

Abstract

Three research questions were investigated: 1) can phonological tasks be characterized in terms of two facets, a processing complexity facet and a linguistic complexity facet, 2) can performance on the phonological tasks be subsumed under one general phonological awareness factor, and 3) how are phonological abilities and other cognitive abilities related? A test battery of tasks with a complete crossing of the two phonological awareness facets was given to 364 children aged four, along with a test battery with tasks measuring cognitive abilities (Gf, Visual, Verbal). A “correlated trait-correlated method minus one” measurement model fit the data well, and supported the proposed model with two dimensions of phonological awareness. Further analyses demonstrated that the phonological tasks can be subsumed under a dominating general phonological awareness factor and orthogonal narrow factors representing the processing and linguistic complexity factors. A structural equation model in which the linguistic and processing complexity factors were regressed on Gf showed that Gf was highly related to the processing complexity factors but not to the linguistic factors. This suggests that the well-established impact of Gf on reading skills is mediated through phonological awareness. The Verbal factor was related to the linguistic complexity factors when Gf was partialed out but not to the processing complexity factors. The Visual factor did not relate to any of the phonological factors. These results support the view that the Verbal and Visual factors are modality specific, and do not represent general processing capacity.