Phonological Abilities Research Articles

Fonološke sposobnosti dece predškolskog uzrasta

The aim of the research is to identify phonological abilities - voice analysis and word synthesis - and elements of phonological awareness in preschool children. The sample consisted of 85 children (42 boys and 43 girls), ages 6-7. The Test of the Speech Sound Analysis and Word Synthesis (Radičević & Marinković, 1993) was used to assess the ability of the speech sound analysis and synthesis, while the Test for Assessing Phonological Awareness - FONT Test (Subotić, 2011) was used to assess the respondents' phonological awareness. The results of the research showed that, in six out of eight tasks assessing the elements of phonological awareness, the children demonstrated an average and above average development of phonological abilities: syllable merging, syllabic segmentation, identifying the initial phoneme, identifying rhyme, phonemic segmentation, and identifying the final phoneme, while the lowest achievement was observed in the tasks of eliminating the initial phoneme and phonemic substitution of the initial phoneme. No statistically significant differences were found between boys and girls in their achievement on the FONT test tasks (p> 0.05). By further analyzing the results, and based on the results of average achievement, we found that the children constituting the research sample were more successful in the tasks of synthesizing monosyllabic and two-syllable words, than in the analysis of monosyllabic and two-syllable words. Differences in achievement between boys and girls regarding the speech sound analysis and synthesis tasks were identified in the tasks involving the speech sound synthesis (p <0.05).

유아 대상 뇌 기반 ICT 활용교육 프로그램 개발 및 음운인식능력에 미친 효과

유아 대상 뇌 기반 ICT 활용교육 프로그램 개발 및 음운인식능력에 미친 효과

The Effect of Phonological Ability on Math is Modulated by Socioeconomic Status in Elementary School

Math achievement is affected by social factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and domain-general cognitive factors such as phonological ability. Little is known how the effects of cognitive factors change depending on social factors during development. This study focuses on the estimation of the effect of phonological ability on math achievement during the first year of schooling and testing the hypothesis that this effect varied depending on students SES. To achieve our aims we used two-wave longitudinal study which was conducted on large sample of first-graders (N= 2,948) in the Tatar Republic (Russia). Participants were assessed twice, at the beginning and at the end of the first grade (mean age was 7.3 years at Time 1). The item response theory (IRT) scaling procedure was used to estimate individual scores in math, number identification, phonology and reading. In order to estimate the effect of phonological ability and SES on math performance, mixed-effect longitudinal models were applied. The results revealed that phonological ability had a significant positive effect on math achievement even when reading achievement, number identification and SES were controlled for. Among SES dimensions only maternal education had an effect on math achievement and its improvement. The effect of phonological ability was higher for students with a larger number of books at home and who used more than one language at home.

Phonological and lexical abilities of Jordanian children with autism

This study examines phonological and lexical abilities of children with autism in Jordan. JISH Articulation Test (JAT) to measure phonological abilities and JISH School Readiness Screening Test to measure lexical abilities were used in the study. Children with ASD (n = 39) aged 4–8 years and 40 children with typical development were selected to participate in this study. The main finding of this study was that language impairment in both phonological and lexical abilities were noted among Jordanian children with ASD. The results also showed that phonological impairment was greater than lexical impairment. It is concluded that the findings of such study will be helpful to guide experts to provide children with ASD with appropriate educational programs and establish a comprehensive and effective treatment protocols that include phonological and lexical exercises to enhance their speech and language abilities.

Effect of dialect on phonological analysis

ABSTRACTIt is important to understand a child’s language background, to ensure appropriate assessment, diagnosis and treatment of speech sound disorders. Singapore is home to various cultures and languages, and local speech norms are needed to provide an accurate reference for assessing phonological disorders in the local population. This study aims to establish normative data and better understand the English phonological development of English–Mandarin bilingual preschoolers in Singapore, aged 3; 6–4; 5 years. The Articulation and Phonology subtests of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology – UK were used to collect speech data from 146 preschoolers. Responses were scored against two standards – British Standard English (BSE) and Singapore English (SGE), in terms of speech sound accuracy, and the frequency and type of error patterns present. The effect of language dominance on the children’s English phonological abilities was explored. Results showed that the preschoolers’ speech sound accuracy increased significantly when scored against SGE versus BSE targets. The number of children identified to be using several error patterns was reduced when SGE targets were used instead of BSE targets. English-dominant children scored significantly higher than their Mandarin-dominant peers on measures of speech sound accuracy. The identification of error patterns also differed between the two groups. These results show that it is important to take dialectal variation and language dominance into account in assessment, to determine if speech characteristics are due to a speech sound disorder or just normal dialectal variations.

Delays in the reading and spelling of children with cerebral palsy: Associations with phonological and visual processes

BackgroundThis investigation addresses the question of whether there exists a significant discrepancy in the cognitive abilities of children with cerebral palsy (CP) who, despite the presence of age appropriate communication and language, have reading and spelling delays. AimsWe wanted to discover whether there was a relationship between the phonological and visual perceptual abilities of children with CP and their progress in reading and spelling. Methods and proceduresFifteen children with CP (aged between 6:9 years and 11:6 years) were assessed on reading and spelling; communication and language; non-verbal reasoning; phonological processing; and visual perception. Outcomes and resultsTen of the children had very weak reading and spelling skills. Five children had (mostly) age appropriate scores of reading and spelling. No differences were found between these two groups in non-verbal reasoning or communication and language. However, phonological abilities, visual sequential memory and perception of visuospatial relationships were found to be related to reading and spelling. Conclusions and implicationsThe findings suggest that children with CP are at risk for reading and spelling delays when they have poor phonological processing, visual sequential memory and perception of visuospatial relationships. The implications of the findings for classroom practice are discussed.

Beyond the phonological deficit: Semantics contributes indirectly to decoding efficiency in children with dyslexia.

The present study explored the direct and indirect contribution of semantic abilities to the levels of phonological and orthographic abilities in children with dyslexia. The semantic abilities of fifty‐five 9‐year‐old Dutch children diagnosed with dyslexia were associated with their phonological abilities (phonological awareness, rapid naming, and verbal working memory) and their word decoding and pseudoword decoding efficiency scores. It was found that children's semantic abilities predicted both word decoding efficiency and pseudoword decoding efficiency indirectly via phonological awareness and rapid naming. These results can be explained in terms of a lexical restructuring account of early reading development; strong semantic abilities provide children with dyslexia with a boost to strengthen their phonological skills and naming skills, which indirectly facilitate their reading development.

Infants’ sensitivity to rhyme in songs

Children’s songs often contain rhyming words at phrase endings. In this study, we investigated whether infants can already recognize this phonological pattern in songs. Earlier studies using lists of spoken words were equivocal on infants’ spontaneous processing of rhymes (Hayes et al., 2000; Jusczyk et al., 1999). Songs, however, constitute an ecologically valid rhyming stimulus, which could allow for spontaneous processing of this phonological pattern in infants. Novel children’s songs with rhyming and non-rhyming lyrics using pseudo-words were presented to 35 9-month-old Dutch infants using the Headturn Preference Procedure. Infants on average listened longer to the non-rhyming songs, with around half of the infants however exhibiting a preference for the rhyming songs. These results highlight that infants have the processing abilities to benefit from their natural rhyming input for the development of their phonological abilities.

Mind wandering, together with test anxiety and self-efficacy, predicts student's academic self-concept but not reading comprehension skills.

Mind wandering (MW) has commonly been linked to bad scholastic performance; however, such association has rarely been investigated in the classroom. Moreover, in examining such association, motivational variables have been largely ignored. We aimed at examining the associations between the dispositional tendency to engage in MW and a series of reading comprehension skills and measures of academic self-concept above and beyond the role of sex, age, test anxiety, self-efficacy, and self-regulation strategies. Late adolescents (N=272, 133 females; 17.23±1.10years) recruited from 15 classes in public high schools. Students were examined in their classroom during regular teaching activities and first performed a reading comprehension test. Then, they underwent a battery assessing literacy skills, academic self-concept, the dispositional tendency to mind wander, and aspects related to self-regulated learning. Reading comprehension and literacy skills (decoding, orthographic awareness, spelling skills, and phonological abilities) were not associated with the tendency to mind wander. Instead, MW, test anxiety, and self-efficacy - but not self-regulatory strategies - were independent predictors of academic self-concept. This study highlights the importance of evaluating the effects of MW on academic self-concept, taking into account a complex pattern of motivational and emotional variables.

Backward masking of tones and speech in people who do and do not stutter

PurposeThere is evidence of an auditory-perceptual component of stuttering, and backward masking (BM) is a task to explore that role. Prior research reported poorer thresholds for BM tones in a group of children who persisted in stuttering compared to those for a group that did not persist. This study examined BM for adults who stutter for tones and for speech, which tests a phonetic aspect of hearing. MethodEight persons who stutter (PWS) were closely matched with eight controls (PNS) in terms of phonological abilities, verbal span tasks, age, sex and non-verbal intelligence. These participants were examined for their ability to recognize vowel-consonant (VC) speech syllables and tones in BM paradigm with 0 ms and 300 ms masker to signal onset conditions. ResultsPWS showed significantly poorer performance for speech syllable recognition in quiet and in conditions with masking noise. The pattern of speech errors was similar in both groups, but the PWS produced more errors. A significant condition by group interaction in backward masking for tones was attributed to higher masked thresholds in PWS than in PNS in the 0 ms delay condition for BM for tones. ConclusionThis was the first study to examine BM for speech in PWS. Results provide support for a small auditory-perceptual deficit for speech understanding in adults who stutter that was revealed in the absence of a lexical context. The speech results are explained in terms of possible indistinct phoneme boundaries in PWS and the effects of vowel context in speech recognition.

Tablet computer games to measure dorsal stream performance in good and poor readers

Evidence suggests a link between deficits in visuo-spatial attention, and subsequent reading ability. However, all the research in the area thus far has been conducted using traditional, lab-based psychophysics, with very tightly controlled visual parameters. In order to take this research further, such as using visuo-spatial tasks for remediation purposes, it must be established that such tasks can be taken out of the laboratory, ‘gamified’, and still predict reading ability. This study aimed to determine if subtle visual deficits in poor readers could be detected outside a traditional laboratory, in relatively uncontrolled settings using portable game-like technology. Classic visual search and change detection programs, thought to rely on the visual dorsal stream, were modified to a game-like format. They were administered on a portable computer tablet within the participants’ school setting. Whilst IQ predicted reading rate, visuo-spatial tasks such as visual search speed, and change detection, each accounted for unique variance in reading rate over and above IQ, age and phonological ability. These results are consistent with the visuo–spatial attention deficit hypothesis, and provide support for the development of portable computerised games that may assess and potentially target this deficit in poor readers.

Hearing Matters More Than Seeing: A Cross-Modality Study of Statistical Learning and Reading Ability

ABSTRACTThere is growing interest in the link between implicit statistical learning (SL) and reading ability. Although learning to read involves both auditory and visual modalities, it is not known whether reading skills might be more strongly associated with auditory SL or visual SL. Here we assessed SL across both modalities in 36 typically developing children and 36 healthy adults using the classic triplet-learning paradigm. Auditory SL was significantly associated with sentence reading fluency (Woodcock Johnson III Test of Achievement) in the combined sample of children and adults after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. In further analysis of the child data, auditory SL was significantly associated with nonword reading accuracy (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test), a relationship which appeared to be mediated by phonological processing abilities (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing). These findings suggest that auditory SL might contribute more strongly to certain aspects of reading development compared to visual SL.

Individual differences in syntactic processing: Is there evidence for reader-text interactions?

There remains little consensus about whether there exist meaningful individual differences in syntactic processing and, if so, what explains them. We argue that this partially reflects the fact that few psycholinguistic studies of individual differences include multiple constructs, multiple measures per construct, or tests for reliable measures. Here, we replicated three major syntactic phenomena in the psycholinguistic literature: use of verb distributional statistics, difficulty of object-versus subject-extracted relative clauses, and resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguities. We examine whether any individual differences in these phenomena could be predicted by language experience or general cognitive abilities (phonological ability, verbal working memory capacity, inhibitory control, perceptual speed). We find correlations between individual differences and offline, but not online, syntactic phenomena. Condition effects on reading time were not consistent within individuals, limiting their ability to correlate with other measures. We suggest that this might explain controversy over individual differences in language processing.

Diagnostic Accuracy of Traditional Measures of Phonological Ability for Bilingual Preschoolers and Kindergarteners.

Bilingual children whose phonological skills are evaluated using measures designed for monolingual English speakers are at risk for misdiagnosis of speech sound disorders (De Lamo White & Jin, 2011). Forty-four children participated in this study: 15 typically developing monolingual English speakers, 7 monolingual English speakers with phonological disorders, 14 typically developing bilingual Spanish-English speakers, and 8 bilingual children with phonological disorders. Children's single-word speech productions were examined on Percentage Consonants Correct-Revised (Shriberg, Austin, Lewis, McSweeny, & Wilson, 1997a) and accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds (Shriberg, 1993) in English. Consonant accuracy in English was compared between monolinguals and bilinguals with and without speech sound disorders. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curves were used to observe diagnostic accuracy of the measures examined. Percentage Consonants Correct-Revised was found to be a good indicator of phonological ability in both monolingual and bilingual English-speaking children at the age of 5;0. No significant differences were found between language groups on any of the measures examined. Our results suggest that traditional measures of phonological ability for monolinguals could provide good diagnostic accuracy for bilingual children at the age of 5;0 years. These findings are preliminary, and children younger than 5;0 years should be examined for risk of misdiagnosis.

Relating resting-state hemodynamic changes to the variable language profiles in post-stroke aphasia.

Linking both structural lesions and the functional integrity of remaining brain tissue to patients' behavioural profile may be critical in discovering the limits of behavioural recovery post stroke. In the present study, we explored the relationship between temporal hemodynamic changes and language performance in chronic post-stroke aphasia. We collected detailed language and neuropsychological data for 66 patients with chronic (>1 year) post-stroke aphasia. We used principal component analysis to extract their core language-neuropsychological features. From resting-state fMRI scans in 35 patients, we calculated the lag in the time-course of the intact brain voxels in each patient. Finally, variation across the language-cognitive factors was related to both the patients' structural damage and the time-course changes in each patient's intact tissue. Phonological abilities were correlated with the structural integrity of the left superior temporal, angular gyrus, supramarginal gyrus and arcuate fasciculus regions and hemodynamic advance in the left intra-parietal sulcus. Speech fluency related to integrity of premotor regions, plus hemodynamic advance in the left middle/superior temporal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus, and right angular gyrus. Semantic performance reflected a combination of medial ventral temporal lobe status and hemodynamic delay in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus. Finally, executive abilities correlated with hemodynamic delay in the left middle/inferior frontal gyrus, right rolandic operculum, bilateral supplementary motor areas/middle cingulum areas, and bilateral thalamus/caudate. Following stroke, patients' patterns of chronic language abilities reflects a combination of structural and functional integrity across a distributed network of brain regions. The correlation between hemodynamic changes and behaviours may have clinical importance.

Unification of behavioural, computational and neural accounts of word production errors in post-stroke aphasia.

Neuropsychological assessment, brain imaging and computational modelling have augmented our understanding of the multifaceted functional deficits in people with language disorders after stroke. Despite the volume of research using each technique, no studies have attempted to assimilate all three approaches in order to generate a unified behavioural-computational-neural model of post-stroke aphasia.The present study included data from 53 participants with chronic post-stroke aphasia and merged: aphasiological profiles based on a detailed neuropsychological assessment battery which was analysed with principal component and correlational analyses; measures of the impairment taken from Dell's computational model of word production; and the neural correlates of both behavioural and computational accounts analysed by voxel-based correlational methodology.As a result, all three strands coincide with the separation of semantic and phonological stages of aphasic naming, revealing the prominence of these dimensions for the explanation of aphasic performance. Over and above three previously described principal components (phonological ability, semantic ability, executive-demand), we observed auditory working memory as a novel factor. While the phonological Dell parameter was uniquely related to phonological errors/factor, the semantic parameter was less clear-cut, being related to both semantic errors and omissions, and loading heavily with semantic ability and auditory working memory factors. The close relationship between the semantic Dell parameter and omission errors recurred in their high lesion-correlate overlap in the anterior middle temporal gyrus. In addition, the simultaneous overlap of the lesion correlate of omission errors with more dorsal temporal regions, associated with the phonological parameter, highlights the multiple drivers that underpin this error type. The novel auditory working memory factor was located along left superior/middle temporal gyrus and ventral inferior parietal lobe.The present study fused computational, behavioural and neural data to gain comprehensive insights into the nature of the multifaceted presentations in aphasia. Our unified account contributes enhanced knowledge on dimensions explaining chronic post-stroke aphasia, the variety of factors affecting inter-individual variability, the neural basis of performance, and potential clinical implications.

Relationships between early literacy and nonlinguistic rhythmic processes in kindergarteners

A growing number of studies report links between nonlinguistic rhythmic abilities and certain linguistic abilities, particularly phonological skills. The current study investigated the relationship between nonlinguistic rhythmic processing, phonological abilities, and early literacy abilities in kindergarteners. A distinctive aspect of the current work was the exploration of whether processing of different types of rhythmic patterns is differentially related to kindergarteners’ phonological and reading-related abilities. Specifically, we examined the processing of metrical versus nonmetrical rhythmic patterns, that is, patterns capable of being subdivided into equal temporal intervals or not (Povel & Essens, 1985). This is an important comparison because most music involves metrical sequences, in which rhythm often has an underlying temporal grid of isochronous units. In contrast, nonmetrical sequences are arguably more typical to speech rhythm, which is temporally structured but does not involve an underlying grid of equal temporal units. A rhythm discrimination app with metrical and nonmetrical patterns was administered to 74 kindergarteners in conjunction with cognitive and preliteracy measures. Findings support a relationship among rhythm perception, phonological awareness, and letter-sound knowledge (an essential precursor of reading). A mediation analysis revealed that the association between rhythm perception and letter-sound knowledge is mediated through phonological awareness. Furthermore, metrical perception accounted for unique variance in letter-sound knowledge above all other language and cognitive measures. These results point to a unique role for temporal regularity processing in the association between musical rhythm and literacy in young children.

READING IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF VOCABULARY AND PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

This study was designed to examine the relative contributions to EFL learners’ reading comprehension of vocabulary size and phonological awareness, potentially significant for the mainly Japanese university students who were the subjects of the study, because of the transfer of L1 reading behaviors which may interfere with fluent reading in English which is a growing necessity for the ‘global human resources’ Japan needs to participate fully in international society. Since both vocabulary size and pronunciation are known to be related to reading skill, this study measured learners’ vocabulary size, phonemic distinction ability, and reading comprehension ability, all using well-known standard tests. A further test of general awareness of English phonology, suggested by Coulson et al. (2013), was also carried out. The results were then statistically examined for any possible correlations, and what they might tell us about the relationships between these various abilities. Although no evidence was found to support a strong relationship between vocabulary alone and reading comprehension, there were indications of interaction between phonological awareness and vocabulary. A relationship between aural phonological distinction ability and reading comprehension was clearly indicated, and there was strong evidence of an effect for the subjects’ first language. These results suggest that phonological knowledge does, indeed, have a part to play in reading comprehension, and possibly reading speed. This underlines the importance of reading aloud practice and encouraging learners’ to acquire accurate pronunciation when teaching reading.

Triangulation of language-cognitive impairments, naming errors and their neural bases post-stroke.

In order to gain a better understanding of aphasia one must consider the complex combinations of language impairments along with the pattern of paraphasias. Despite the fact that both deficits and paraphasias feature in diagnostic criteria, most research has focused only on the lesion correlates of language deficits, with minimal attention on the pattern of patients' paraphasias. In this study, we used a data-driven approach (principal component analysis - PCA) to fuse patient impairments and their pattern of errors into one unified model of chronic post-stroke aphasia. This model was subsequently mapped onto the patients' lesion profiles to generate the triangulation of language-cognitive impairments, naming errors and their neural correlates. Specifically, we established the pattern of co-occurrence between fifteen error types, which avoids focussing on a subset of errors or the use of experimenter-derived methods to combine across error types. We obtained five principal components underlying the patients' errors: omission errors; semantically-related responses; phonologically-related responses; dysfluent responses; and a combination of circumlocutions with mixed errors. In the second step, we aligned these paraphasia-related principal components with the patients' performance on a detailed language and cognitive assessment battery, utilising an additional PCA. This omnibus PCA revealed seven unique fused impairment-paraphasia factors: output phonology; semantics; phonological working memory; speech quanta; executive-cognitive skill; phonological (input) discrimination; and the production of circumlocution errors. In doing so we were able to resolve the complex relationships between error types and impairments. Some are relatively straightforward: circumlocution errors formed their own independent factor; there was a one-to-one mapping for phonological errors with expressive phonological abilities and for dysfluent errors with speech fluency. In contrast, omission-type errors loaded across both semantic and phonological working memory factors, whilst semantically-related errors had the most complex relationship by loading across four factors (phonological ability, speech quanta, executive-cognitive skills and circumlocution-type errors). Three components had unique lesion correlates: phonological working memory with the primary auditory region; semantics with the anterior temporal region; and fluency with the pre-central gyrus, converging with existing literature. In conclusion, the data-driven approach allowed derivation of the triangulation of deficits, error types and lesion correlates in post-stroke aphasia.

The Nature of Developmental Dyslexia in a Transparent Orthography

ABSTRACTThe present study aimed to explore the nature of developmental dyslexia in a language considered to have a transparent orthography, namely, Dutch. We assessed the accuracy and efficiency of decoding words and pseudowords with four lengths as well as three types of phonological ability in 2,760 typical children and 397 peers with dyslexia across Grades 3–6. For typical readers, decoding levels across the grades were found to be largely a matter of increasing speed. For the readers with dyslexia, difficulties manifested themselves for both accuracy and efficiency of decoding but more for pseudowords than for words. The readers with dyslexia were also more sensitive to word-length effects on decoding. The phonological abilities of the children with dyslexia lagged behind as well. It is concluded that in Dutch, children with dyslexia show a phonological deficit and persistent problems with assembling phonology during the phonological recoding of orthographic representations.