Differences In Phonological Awareness Research Articles

An Investigation of the Differences in Phonological Awareness Performance Based on Cognitive Style

Purpose: Research in cognitive style has shown its relevance in predicting reading ability. However, its effect on phonological awareness, which plays a central role in reading acquisition, remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in phonological awareness based on cognitive style. Method: Twenty-nine monolingual English speaking African American and Caucasian 6-year-old 1st grade students from the Washington DC metropolitan area participated in the study. Participants were distributed as follows: 11 females, 18 males, 21 African Americans, and 8 Caucasians. Participants were of middle-class socioeconomic background with no evidence of cognitive, language, phonological, articulation or hearing deficits. Testing occurred over two sessions scheduled on different days. During the first session, participants were individually administered the Cognitive Style Assessment Protocol (CSAP) to measure cognitive style and assigned to either the wholistic or analytic cognitive style group. In the second session, the Phonological Awareness Assessment Protocol (PAAP) was administered to measure the main components of phonological awareness. Raw data consisted of participant scores on the CSAP and PAAP. Data were analyzed using two-tailed t-tests to determine if there were significant group differences between the analytic and wholistic groups in phonological awareness and its components. Results: Results showed that students with an analytic cognitive style performed better than those with a wholistic cognitive style on overall phonological awareness and on the following phonological awareness components: syllable segmentation, phoneme substitution, and phoneme blending. No significant group differences were found on rhyming, phoneme isolation, phoneme deletion, and phoneme segmentation tasks. Conclusion: Findings showed some differences in phonological awareness between analytic and wholistic students with analytic students performing better than wholistic students. These differences in aspects of phonological awareness seem to implicate cognitive style in reading acquisition given the central role that phonological awareness pays in reading development and suggest that wholistic students may experience reading difficulties that stem from their cognitive orientation.

Neurocognitive mechanisms of co-occurring math difficulties in dyslexia: Differences in executive function and visuospatial processing.

Children with dyslexia frequently also struggle with math. However, studies of reading disability (RD) rarely assess math skill, and the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying co-occurring reading and math disability (RD+MD) are not clear. The current study aimed to identify behavioral and neurocognitive factors associated with co-occurring MD among 86 children with RD. Within this sample, 43% had co-occurring RD+MD and 22% demonstrated a possible vulnerability in math, while 35% had no math difficulties (RD-Only). We investigated whether RD-Only and RD+MD students differed behaviorally in their phonological awareness, reading skills, or executive functions, as well as in the brain mechanisms underlying word reading and visuospatial working memory using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The RD+MD group did not differ from RD-Only on behavioral or brain measures of phonological awareness related to speech or print. However, the RD+MD group demonstrated significantly worse working memory and processing speed performance than the RD-Only group. The RD+MD group also exhibited reduced brain activations for visuospatial working memory relative to RD-Only. Exploratory brain-behavior correlations along a broad spectrum of math ability revealed that stronger math skills were associated with greater activation in bilateral visual cortex. These converging neuro-behavioral findings suggest that poor executive functions in general, including differences in visuospatial working memory, are specifically associated with co-occurring MD in the context of RD. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children with reading disabilities (RD) frequently have a co-occurring math disability (MD), but the mechanisms behind this high comorbidity are not well understood. We examined differences in phonological awareness, reading skills, and executive function between children with RD only versus co-occurring RD+MD using behavioral and fMRI measures. Children with RD only versus RD+MD did not differ in their phonological processing, either behaviorally or in the brain. RD+MD was associated with additional behavioral difficulties in working memory, and reduced visual cortex activation during a visuospatial working memory task.

Differences in phonological awareness of young L3 learners: an accent mimicry study

ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate the nature of phonological awareness in young L3 learners, and the extent to which it changes over time as L2 and L3 learning progresses. Two groups of 12 closely matched multilinguals (total= 24, aged 12–13), who shared their L2 (English) but their L1/L3 (German/Polish) were mirrored, mimicked L2 and L3 accents in their L1 speech and reflected over their mimicry performance at the beginning and at the end of the first year of L3 instruction. Based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the results showed a differentiated range of manifestations of phonological awareness in the two groups of young multilinguals, possibly explicable by the phonological distance of their L2 and L3 in relation to their L1. No significant changes in the learners’ L2/L3 phonological awareness were detected over the school year. In addition, combined group results showed a moderate correlation for the learners’ L2 mimicry and foreign accent ratings at both testing times and for their L3 mimicry and foreign accent ratings at the second testing. Insights gained from individual phonological awareness profiles suggest, however, that this relationship may not hold for all L3 learners. The findings are also discussed from a methodological perspective.

Distinct Benefits Given Large Versus Small Grain Orthographic Instruction for English-Speaking Adults Learning to Read Russian Cyrillic.

Initial instruction emphasizing large grain units (i.e., words) showed distinct advantages over small grain instruction for English-speaking adults learning to read an artificial orthography (Brennan and Booth in Read Writ 28(7):917-938, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-015-9555-2 ). The current study extends this research by training 34 English-speaking adults to read Russian Cyrillic given initial instruction emphasizing either large or small units (words or letters). Results reveal no differences on word learning, but higher accuracy on letter-phoneme matching given letter-based instruction and higher accuracy on rime-rhyme matching given word-based instruction. Differences in phonological awareness (PA) skill showed that higher PA skill resulted in higher accuracy and slower reaction times only for the adults given the instruction with the word emphasis, suggesting that adults with high PA skill given word-based instruction may engage in time intensive small grain analyses (e.g., grapheme-phoneme correspondence) even when their attention is directed to larger grain units. Overall, these results extend previous findings and reveal that word and letter-based instruction each have distinct advantages for facilitating increased sensitivity to either letters/phonemes or rimes/rhymes when adults are learning a natural second (L2) consistent alphabetic orthography.

Technology-Based Tools for English Literacy Intervention: Examining Intervention Grain Size and Individual Differences.

Technology plays an increasingly important role in educational practice, including interventions for struggling learners (Torgesen et al., 2010; de Souza et al., 2018). This study focuses on the efficacy of tablet-based applications (see Word Reading, Grapholearn, and an experimental word-level program) for the purpose of supplementing early English literacy intervention with primary grades 1 and 2 children. The children were identified for learning support programs within Singaporean schools, which follow a bilingual policy, meaning children were learning reading in English plus an additional language. One hundred forty-seven children across seven schools participated (Mean age = 6.66). Within learning support classrooms, triplets of students matched on basic reading skills were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) phoneme-level, (2) rime-level, or (3) word-level focused interventions. All groups performed reading skills activities on iPads, across two phases over a 14-week period. Assessments for word reading accuracy and fluency, pseudoword decoding accuracy and fluency, and spelling were administered at four time points, pre- and post-intervention. Additional baseline measures were taken to assess individual differences in phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, general cognitive ability, statistical learning, and bilingual vocabulary knowledge. Mixed model analysis was conducted on the pre- to post-test measures across the two phases of the intervention (focused on accuracy then fluency). All groups made gains across the different literacy measures, while the phoneme-level intervention showed an advantage over the rime-level intervention, but not the word-level intervention, for decoding. There were also moderating effects of individual differences on outcomes. The general pattern of results showed an advantage of the word-level intervention for those with poorer phonological awareness for reading fluency; and a phoneme-level intervention advantage for those with poorer statistical learning ability. Children’s bilingual group (English plus Mandarin, English plus Malay, or English plus Tamil) also showed differential effects of the type of intervention (e.g., phoneme- or word-level) on different outcome measures. These results, along with data collected from the tablets during the intervention, suggest the need to examine the interplay between different types of technology-based interventions and individual differences in learning profiles.

Effects of training phonological awareness on children's reading skills

Phonological awareness and letter knowledge have been shown to be precursors of children's word reading and reading comprehension. As a consequence, promoting children's phonological awareness should result in better reading skills. In order to evaluate this assumption, we trained phonological awareness and letter knowledge of 370 German preschool children and compared their word reading and reading comprehension skills with those of a group of 99 untrained children. Our findings indicate strong intervention effects on children's phonological awareness and letter knowledge. However, this advantage did not result in better reading skills in general. Within the group of low-performing children, we found small effects on word reading. This effect was mediated by individual differences in phonological awareness. In summary, only for low-performing children do the findings support our theoretical assumptions. This may be attributable to differences in the orthographic transparency between German and English, which restricts a generalization of findings across languages.

103. Bottom-Up Processing During Natural Reading is Associated With Individual Differences in Phonological Awareness and Executive Control in People With Schizophrenia

103. Bottom-Up Processing During Natural Reading is Associated With Individual Differences in Phonological Awareness and Executive Control in People With Schizophrenia

A Neural Basis for Phonological Awareness? An Oscillatory Temporal-Sampling Perspective

Individual differences in phonological awareness, or speech-sound awareness, between children predict reading and spelling development across languages. Recent advances in our understanding of the neural basis of speech encoding suggest one possible sensory and neural basis for these individual differences. This article describes an oscillatory theoretical perspective based on sampling of the speech stream by networks of cells that vary in excitability at different temporal rates. These variations in neural excitability (oscillations) may align to similar energy variations (such as amplitude modulations, AMs) in speech, helping to encode the signal. Indeed, cell networks in auditory cortex form an oscillatory hierarchy, which mirrors an AM hierarchy found in rhythmic speech. Mappings between these hierarchies may support parsing of the speech signal into phonological units. Oscillations at approximately 2 Hz may help identify stressed syllables, used to convey meaning in all languages, while oscillations at approximately 5 Hz may help identify syllables. Behavioral research suggests that the rhythmic patterning of stressed syllables may provide an acoustic “skeleton” for phonological development across languages. As well as helping to explain individual differences, an oscillatory framework offers new targets for improving children’s phonological development, for example, via multimodal rhythmic activities.

Prevention of dyslexia – short-term and intermediate effects of promoting phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondence with at-risk preschool children

This study assesses the short-term and intermediate effects of preschool training stimulating phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondence for children at risk of developing dyslexia. Moreover, we examined whether training reduced the frequency of subsequent dyslexic problems. 25 children at risk of developing dyslexia were trained with Hören, Lauschen, Lernen 1 und 2 (Küspert & Schneider, 2008; Plume & Schneider, 2004) by their kindergarten teachers and were compared with 60 untrained at-risk children. The training revealed a significant short-term effect: The phonological awareness of trained at-risk children increased significantly over that of untrained at-risk children. However, there were no differences in phonological awareness, spelling, and reading ability between the first-graders in the training and control group. Furthermore, reading problems were reduced in the training group. In the future, phonological awareness as well as additional predictors should be included when identifying children vulnerable to developing dyslexia. Moreover, in order to prevent dyslexia, additional prerequisite deficits need to be identified, alleviated, and their effects evaluated.

Language skills and nonverbal cognitive processes associated with reading comprehension in deaf children.

The main aim of this study was to examine the relationship between language skills (vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness), nonverbal cognitive processes (attention, memory and executive functions) and reading comprehension in deaf children. Participants were thirty prelingually deaf children (10.7 ± 1.6 years old; 18 boys, 12 girls), who were classified as either good readers or poor readers by their scores on two reading comprehension tasks. The children were administered a rhyme judgment task and seven computerized neuropsychological tasks specifically designed and adapted for deaf children to evaluate vocabulary knowledge, attention, memory and executive functions in deaf children. A correlational approach was also used to assess the association between variables. Although the two groups did not show differences in phonological awareness, good readers showed better vocabulary and performed significantly better than poor readers on attention, memory and executive functions measures. Significant correlations were found between better scores in reading comprehension and better scores on tasks of vocabulary and non-verbal cognitive processes. The results suggest that in deaf children, vocabulary knowledge and nonverbal cognitive processes such as selective attention, visuo-spatial memory, abstract reasoning and sequential processing may be especially relevant for the development of reading comprehension.

Musical rhythm discrimination explains individual differences in grammar skills in children.

This study considered a relation between rhythm perception skills and individual differences in phonological awareness and grammar abilities, which are two language skills crucial for academic achievement. Twenty-five typically developing 6-year-old children were given standardized assessments of rhythm perception, phonological awareness, morpho-syntactic competence, and non-verbal cognitive ability. Rhythm perception accounted for 48% of the variance in morpho-syntactic competence after controlling for non-verbal IQ, socioeconomic status, and prior musical activities. Children with higher phonological awareness scores were better able to discriminate complex rhythms than children with lower scores, but not after controlling for IQ. This study is the first to show a relation between rhythm perception skills and morpho-syntactic production in children with typical language development. These findings extend the literature showing substantial overlap of neurocognitive resources for processing music and language. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/_lO692qHDNg.

Reading comprehension and its underlying components in second-language learners: A meta-analysis of studies comparing first- and second-language learners.

We report a systematic meta-analytic review of studies comparing reading comprehension and its underlying components (language comprehension, decoding, and phonological awareness) in first- and second-language learners. The review included 82 studies, and 576 effect sizes were calculated for reading comprehension and underlying components. Key findings were that, compared to first-language learners, second-language learners display a medium-sized deficit in reading comprehension (pooled effect size d = -0.62), a large deficit in language comprehension (pooled effect size d = -1.12), but only small differences in phonological awareness (pooled effect size d = -0.08) and decoding (pooled effect size d = -0.12). A moderator analysis showed that characteristics related to the type of reading comprehension test reliably explained the variation in the differences in reading comprehension between first- and second-language learners. For language comprehension, studies of samples from low socioeconomic backgrounds and samples where only the first language was used at home generated the largest group differences in favor of first-language learners. Test characteristics and study origin reliably contributed to the variations between the studies of language comprehension. For decoding, Canadian studies showed group differences in favor of second-language learners, whereas the opposite was the case for U.S. studies. Regarding implications, unless specific decoding problems are detected, interventions that aim to ameliorate reading comprehension problems among second-language learners should focus on language comprehension skills.

Sex differences in phonological awareness and reading ability

A study was conducted to measure possible sex differences in phonological awareness and reading ability among children in early primary school. A subset of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) was administered to 140 children in kindergarten through to second grade (mean ages five to seven years). Independent variables were sex and grade level. Dependent variables were phoneme segmentation fluency; correct letter sound fluency and whole word reading fluency of non-words. Measurements on all dependent variables displayed a severe positive skew. Non-parametric tests revealed significant female superiority across all three dependent variables. The sex differences also increased between kindergarten and Grade 2.

Development of Phonological Awareness and Letter Knowledge in Bosnian Preschool Children

A study was carried out on a group of 505 preschool children. The children were given tests measuring their phonological discrimination, rhyme, initial phoneme detection and letter knowledge. In general, phonological discrimination and initial phoneme tasks are easier than the rhyme task. As children increased in age, phonological awareness and letter knowledge both increased. There are differences in phonological awareness between children according to their number of letter known. Letter knowledge is associated with all phonological measures and all variables of phonological awareness were good predictors of letter knowledge.

Niveles de dificultad de la conciencia fonológica y aprendizaje lector

Although there is a relationship between phonological awareness and reading, the reasons for this relationship are controversial. Phonological knowledge is a necessary skill for learning to read, but the process of learning to read can facilitate the development of this knowledge. Previous studies have provided training in phonological awareness, but few have evaluated the development of phonological awareness in students with no previous training in reading. The main aims of this study were (1) to analyze levels of difficulty in phonological awareness in relation to the identification, addition and omission of syllables and phonemes, and (2) to identify differences in phonological awareness as a function of reading development. A total of 299 preschool and first-grade students, aged between 5.6 and 7.6 years (52.6% boys and 47.4% girls), from distinct public schools were assessed by the Phonological Awareness Assessment Test. Participants were distributed in three different groups according to their reading skills. The results showed significant differences in phonological awareness as a function of reading development among the groups when syllabic and phonemic phonological knowledge were assessed. Approximately 18% of participants (53 students) were identified as having learning difficulties (55% boys and 45% girls). These results suggest the advisability of implementing intervention programs when reading problems are related to phonological knowledge. The sequence of phonological development identified allows us to design tasks with different levels of difficulty in order to train students with learning problems in reading.

Phonological awareness in Hebrew (L1) and English (L2) in normal and disabled readers

The present study examined cross-linguistic relationships between phonological awareness in L1 (Hebrew) and L2 (English) among normal (N = 30) and reading disabled (N = 30) Hebrew native speaking college students. Further, it tested the effect of two factors: the lexical status of the stimulus word (real word vs. pseudoword) and the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme (whether it is within L1 or L2) on phonological awareness. Three parallel experimental phonological awareness tasks were developed in both languages: phoneme isolation, full segmentation, and phoneme deletion. As expected, the results revealed lower levels of phonological awareness in the L2 than in the L1, and in the reading disabled than in the normal reader group. The lexical status of the target word was a reliable factor predicting individual differences in phonological awareness in L2. It was also found that the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme was a reliable factor in predicting L2 phonological awareness performance in both reader groups. The results are discussed within the framework of phonological representation and language-specific linguistic constraints on phonological awareness.

Phonological Awareness and Speech Comprehensibility: An Exploratory Study

This study examined whether differences in phonological awareness were related to differences in speech comprehensibility. Seventeen adults who learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in academic settings completed 14 tests of phonological awareness that measured their explicit knowledge of English phonological structures, and three tests of phonological short term memory. The same participants also read aloud a passage and narrated picture stories. These tasks were used by 12 native speakers of English to rate the EFL speakers' comprehensibility on a 9-point scale. There was a strong positive correlation between composite phonological awareness scores and rated comprehensibility and between composite phonological awareness scores and phonological short term memory. The correlation between rated comprehensibility and phonological short term memory was not significant. A simple linear regression analysis showed that approximately 19% of the variance in rated comprehensibility scores was accounted for by composite phonological awareness scores. The study offers support to the view that phonological awareness is related to differences in speech comprehensibility and the results suggest that form-focused instruction in phonology may contribute to the comprehensibility of EFL speakers.

Phonological awareness and the use of phonological similarity in letter–sound learning

The effects of the phonological similarity between a letter sound and the sound in a spoken word, and phonological awareness on letter–sound learning were examined. Two groups of 41 kindergartners were taught four letter sounds. First, both groups had to learn the associations between four symbols and four familiar words. Next, both groups were taught the letter sounds that were paired to these same symbols. Each letter sound corresponded to the first sound of the word that was previously associated with that symbol in the phonological similarity group, whereas such a relation was absent in the other group. In addition, measures of vocabulary, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness were administered. Phonological similarity facilitated letter–sound learning. Individual differences in phonological awareness had a strong effect on letter–sound learning even after current letter knowledge was controlled. Unexpectedly, the effects of phonological awareness and the ability to use phonological similarity on letter–sound learning were found to be independent.

Understanding individual differences in word recognition skills of ESL children

This paper focuses on the extent to which the development of ESL (English as a Second Language) word recognition skills mimics similar trajectories in same-aged EL1 (English as a First Language) children, and the extent to which phonological processing skills and rapid naming can be used to predict word recognition performance in ESL children. Two cohorts of Grade 1 ESL and EL1 primary-level children were followed for two consecutive years. Results indicated that vocabulary knowledge, a measure of language proficiency, and nonverbal intelligence were not significant predictors of word recognition in either group. Yet, by considering individual differences in phonological awareness and rapid naming, it was possible to predict substantial amounts of variance on word recognition performance six months and one year later in both language groups. Commonality analyses indicated that phonological awareness and rapid naming contributed unique variance to word recognition performance. Moreover, the profiles of not at-risk children in the EL1 and ESL groups were similar on all but the oral language measure, where EL1 children had the advantage. In addition, EL1 and ESL profiles of children who had word-recognition difficulty were similar, with low performance on rapid naming and phonological awareness. Results indicate that these measures are reliable indicators of potential reading disability among ESL children.

Contributions of Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatic Naming Ability to the Growth of Word-Reading Skills in Second-to Fifth-Grade Children

A longitudinal-correlational design was used to test the hypothesis that individual differences in rapid automatic naming make a unique contribution to explaining the growth of orthographic reading skills in 2 overlapping periods of development: second to fourth grade, and third to fifth grade. Separate analyses were done on the entire sample of approximately 200 children as well as on subsamples selected for impairment in word-reading development (bottom 20% and bottom 10% of readers). When second- and third-grade reading skills were not included in the multiple regressions, both rapid automatic naming and phonological awareness skills were strongly predictive of individual differences in reading 2 years later. With prior levels of reading skill included in the predictive equation, rapid automatic naming ability did not uniquely explain variance in any of the reading outcome measures. In contrast, individual differences in phonological awareness in both second and third grades did uniquely explain growth in a variety of reading skills over this developmental period. Results are discussed in the context of methodological issues in the use of longitudinal-correlational designs to study reading growth.