Phonological Awareness In Children Research Articles

Language Performance and Disruption of Brain Connectivity in Children with Epilepsy

Abstract Objective To explore the correlation between brain connectivity and language difficulties in children with epilepsy. We hypothesize that the epileptic cortex (where seizures arise) becomes hyperconnected to left frontal and temporal language regions thus suppressing connectivity between language regions. We expect that connectivity is associated with language performance. Method Right-handed children with Self-Limited Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes (SeLECTS) recruited from a specialty clinic, and typically developing age and sex-matched controls (63 children, 9.3+/−2 years, 37% female) recruited from the community completed a language task (verb generation) and a resting task while undergoing an electroencephalogram. Phonological awareness was measured with the CTOPP-2. Connectivity between four regions – left frontal & temporal language regions and bilateral motor regions (epileptic cortices) – was measured using the weighted Phase Lag Index. We tested for group differences in connectivity in either task and for associations between connectivity and phonological awareness. Results SeLECTS had higher left frontal to left temporal connectivity than controls during verb generation (group difference = 0.07, 95% CI 0.02–0.11, p = 0.003) but not at rest. Right motor to left temporal connectivity was elevated in SeLECTS during verb generation (difference = 0.04, 95% CI 0.01–0.07, p = 0.008) and rest (difference = 0.03, 95% CI 0.01–0.05, p = 0.001). Higher right motor to left temporal (−55.8, 95% CI -81.5 to −30.1, p < 0.0001) connectivity during verb generation was associated with poorer phonological awareness in SeLECTS but not controls. Resting connectivity was not associated with phonological awareness in either group. Conclusions Hyperconnectivity may contribute to language difficulties and electroencephalogram may be a biomarker for phonological awareness in children with epilepsy.

Comparison between two phonological awareness tasks in Arabic

Phonological Awareness (PA) in deep orthographies like English can be used to predict reading abilities in later grades. PA is a sensitive measure in identifying Arabic speaking children who struggle to read. The main objective of the present study was to compare two matched versions of a sound blending task to determine whether any of the two created versions (i.e., one with short vowels and the other without short vowels) of this task could yield a more accurate measure of PA in children speaking Jordanian Arabic. Data was collected from 20 randomly selected schools in Jordan. A randomly selected sample of 200 participants in grade 4 who were randomly divided into two groups (100 students each) and were tested on word blending, elision, word recognition, and oral reading fluency. Each group of participants was tested using a different version of the word blending task, while the other tasks used to test the two groups were the same. The major finding of the study revealed a significant difference between the two versions of the blending task in favor of the assumption that using a task without short vowels can produce inflated scores (i.e., the blending task without short vowels yielded higher scores); such scores demonstrated weak correlation with the reading measures. The implications of the current study support the presentation of blending tasks with all the constituent segments of the word including short vowels (i.e., presenting the word with consonants, long vowels, and short vowels), which can better contribute to gauging children's PA abilities.

Rapid online assessment of reading and phonological awareness (ROAR-PA)

Phonological awareness (PA) is at the foundation of reading development: PA is introduced before formal reading instruction, predicts reading development, is a target for early intervention, and is a core mechanism in dyslexia. Conventional approaches to assessing PA are time-consuming and resource intensive: assessments are individually administered and scoring verbal responses is challenging and subjective. Therefore, we introduce a rapid, automated, online measure of PA—The Rapid Online Assessment of Reading—Phonological Awareness—that can be implemented at scale without a test administrator. We explored whether this gamified, online task is an accurate and reliable measure of PA and predicts reading development. We found high correlations with standardized measures of PA (CTOPP-2, r = .80) for children from Pre-K through fourth grade and exceptional reliability (α = .96). Validation in 50 first and second grade classrooms showed reliable implementation in a public school setting with predictive value of future reading development.

Teleneuropsychology intervention in phonological awareness for children with specific learning disorder with reading and mathematical difficulties

Specific learning disorder (SLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 5–15% of school-aged children worldwide. Often, difficulties in reading (SLD-RD) and mathematics (SLD-MD) occur together. Deficits in phonological awareness (PA) have been identified as the common factor between the two difficulties. Intervention in PA has been shown to be effective in SLD-RD; however, it is not clear whether it is also effective in SLD-MD. Neuropsychological intervention is usually conducted face-to-face, but when the patient is in a remote location or during extraordinary situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, tele neuropsychology (TeleNP) may be a suitable alternative. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a telerehabilitation program for PA to improve math skills in children with SLD-RD/SLD-MD. The study had an N-of-1 SCED design, and included six children aged 10–12 years with SLD-RD/SLD-MD. After four baseline measurements with an arithmetic verification paradigm, they were treated with TeleNP-PA. The effect on each participant was evaluated using visual analysis and the reliable change index. After the intervention, all participants showed improvement in arithmetic tasks, suggesting that the PA intervention had a positive influence on these skills.

Cognitive Flexibility Moderates the Predictive Effect of Phonological Awareness on Focus Structures in Chinese Preschool Children.

Focus structures, a complex aspect of information structure in language, have garnered significant attention in psycholinguistics. The question of whether Chinese preschoolers aged 4-6 years possess the ability to process focus structures in oral communication, and how cognitive factors influence this ability, remains a research focal point. To address this, we recruited 100 Chinese preschoolers aged 4-6 years as participants in our study. This study manipulated the positions of focus particles in sentences to investigate the impact of phonological awareness on young children's comprehension of focus structures. Additionally, we examined the mediating roles of cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. Our findings indicate the following: (1) phonological awareness positively predicted the accuracy of focus structural processing; (2) inhibitory control did not significantly predict the accuracy of focus structural processing; and (3) cognitive flexibility partially mediated the relationship between phonological awareness and focus structural comprehension. These results confirmed the predictive effect of cognitive flexibility on children's comprehension of focus structures. Moreover, they demonstrate that young children's phonological awareness can predict their focus structure comprehension ability through the mediating role of cognitive flexibility. This suggests that children's cognitive flexibility can aid in understanding sentences with focus structures.

Impact of reading intervention on the phonological awareness of children with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

To review studies that have intervention in reading with impacts on phonological awareness in children with autism spectrum disorder. Searches took place until February 2021 in Cochrane, Embase, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), LILACS (Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature), PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Web of Science and gray literature databases. The review included experimental studies with preschoolers and schoolchildren with ASD. Two independent reviewers selected the studies and, in case of disagreement, a third reviewer was consulted. Joanna Briggs Institute checklists were used for risk of bias. A random effects meta-analysis was performed and the certainty of the evidence was assessed using the GRADE tool. Eight studies with some impact on phonological awareness were reviewed. The risk of bias was low and moderate. The certainty of the evidence was low for randomized trials and very low for non-randomised trials. Comparison of pre- and post-therapy on the Preschool Literacy Test (TOPEL) showed that children with ASD improved phonological awareness, with a mean difference between baseline and post-therapy of 6.21 (95% CI = 3.75-8.67; I2 = 0%). Shared reading and software activities with words and phrases can alter phonological awareness. These results support further research with larger samples and a detailed description of the intervention to observe its effectiveness in phonological awareness.

Phonological Awareness in Children with and Without Speech Sound Disorder

Phonological Awareness in Children with and Without Speech Sound Disorder

Intergenerational longitudinal associations between parental reading/musical traits, infants' auditory processing, and later phonological awareness skills.

The intergenerational transmission of language/reading skills has been demonstrated by evidence reporting that parental literacy abilities contribute to the prediction of their offspring's language and reading skills. According to the "Intergenerational Multiple Deficit Model," literacy abilities of both parents are viewed as indicators of offspring's liability for literacy difficulties, since parents provide offspring with genetic and environmental endowment. Recently, studies focusing on the heritability of musical traits reached similar conclusions. The "Musical Abilities, Pleiotropy, Language, and Environment (MAPLE)" framework proposed that language/reading and musical traits share a common genetic architecture, and such shared components have an influence on the heritable neural underpinnings of basic-level skills underlying musical and language traits. Here, we investigate the intergenerational transmission of parental musical and language-related (reading) abilities on their offspring's neural response to a basic auditory stimulation (neural intermediate phenotype) and later phonological awareness skills, including in this complex association pattern the mediating effect of home environment. One-hundred and seventy-six families were involved in this study. Through self-report questionnaires we assessed parental reading abilities and musicality, as well as home literacy and musical environment. Offspring were involved in a longitudinal study: auditory processing was measured at 6 months of age by means of a Rapid Auditory Processing electrophysiological paradigm, and phonological awareness was assessed behaviorally at 5 years of age. Results reveal significant correlations between parents' reading skills and musical traits. Intergenerational associations were investigated through mediation analyses using structural equation modeling. For reading traits, the results revealed that paternal reading was indirectly associated with children's phonological awareness skills via their electrophysiological MisMatch Response at 6 months, while maternal reading was directly associated with children's phonological awareness. For musical traits, we found again that paternal musicality, rather than maternal characteristics, was associated with children's phonological phenotypes: in this case, the association was mediated by musical environment. These results provide some insight about the intergenerational pathways linking parental reading and musical traits, neural underpinnings of infants' auditory processing and later phonological awareness skills. Besides shedding light on possible intergenerational transmission mechanisms, this study may open up new perspectives for early intervention based on environmental enrichment.

The role of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming in the braille reading comprehension of Chinese blind children

Reading comprehension is particularly important in blind children. The study investigated if morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming contributed to the sentence and text comprehension of Braille. 104 blind children in grades 3 to 4 and grades 5 to 6 were measured, children's working memory was entered together in the first step, in each regression analysis, while phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were entered separately in the second, third, and final steps, to verify the distinctive role of these three factors in the sentence and text comprehension of Braille. Results showed that, in grades 3 to 4, this study found morphological awareness and phonological awareness contributed to blind children's sentence and text comprehension as controlling for working memory; the contribution of rapid automatized naming is not significant. In grades 5 to 6, rapid automatized naming was only a contributor to sentence and text comprehension of Braille, whereas both morphological awareness and phonological awareness had no significant contribution. The results implicated Chinese blind children's phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming had a potentially important role in Braille sentence and text comprehension.

Development of literacy skills for Japanese deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

We compared the reading development of 77 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) Japanese children, aged 5-7 (40 females), with 139 of their hearing peers (74 females) in 2018. We assessed each group's phonological awareness (PA), grammar, vocabulary, and reading of hiragana (Japanese orthography children learn first). DHH children showed significant delays in grammar and vocabulary but only a slight delay in PA. Younger DHH children scored better than their hearing peers in reading. Although PA predicted reading for hearing children, reading predicted PA for DHH children. PA partially explained grammar skills for both groups. The results suggest educational intervention for reading acquisition should be based on not only general linguistic features but also each language's unique characteristics.

Evaluation of Teachers' Early Literacy Proficiency and In-Class Literacy Practices Based on Child Outputs

This study primarily aims to evaluate preschool teachers' early literacy proficiency and in-class literacy practices based on child outputs. The study comprises 29 preschool teachers working in Gaziantep and 235 students continuing their education in these teachers' classes. The 'Teacher Interview Form' was used in the study to collect information regarding teachers' early literacy proficiency and in-class literacy practices, while the 'Early Literacy Test (EROT)' was used to assess children's early literacy skills. All of the teacher interviews and EROT applications were conducted individually in a designated room or classroom at their own school. The data obtained from the study were calculated and analyzed by the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis H test. The findings revealed that there was no significant difference between the teacher's early literacy proficiency and the children's early literacy subtest scores, that there was a significant difference between the in-class literacy practices and children's receptive and expressive language vocabulary subtest scores, and there was no significant difference between the children's phonological awareness subtest scores and listening comprehension skills.

Difficulties in Phonological Awareness in Children and Adolescents with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

Phonological awareness in children with DLD can be affected in pre-school ages as well as in school ages. Through this quasi-experimental study, formed by a sample of 24 subjects, 12 of with belongs to the experimental group or DLD and 12 belongs to the comparative group or Typical Development (TD). It is intended to know if the phonological awareness in children with SLI is affected and if the results obtained by this group are lower than the comparative group. For this, the evaluation of phonological awareness has been carried out through the PECO test, in order to affirm or deny the hypothesis that children with DLD present specific difficulties in phonological awareness. The results obtained shows that after evaluating both groups, the average performance in the different tasks of the experimental group or DLD is lower than that obtained by the comparative group or with TD; considering a significantly lower result in tasks of identification of phonemes, syllable addiction and phoneme addiction. Therefore, the results of this study reaffirm what has been corroborated by previous studies, that children with DLD have difficulties in phonological awareness and hence the need to implement intervention programs on this to avoid difficulties in other areas such as reading and writing.

Phonological Awareness and Working Memory in Mandarin-Speaking Preschool-Aged Children With Cochlear Implants.

Cochlear implants (CIs) provide significant benefits for profoundly deaf children in their language and cognitive development. However, it remains unclear whether Mandarin-speaking young children with early implantation can develop age-equivalent phonological awareness (PA) skill and working memory (WM) capacity as their normal hearing (NH) peers. The aim of this study was to investigate PA and WM in preschool-aged children with or without hearing loss and to examine the relationship between the two basic skills. The data were collected from 16 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with CIs and 16 age-matched children with NH. All preschool participants were instructed to complete four phonological detection tasks and four digit span tasks. Linear mixed-effects modeling was performed to evaluate PA and WM performances between two groups across different tasks. CI preschoolers showed comparable performances on par with NH controls in phonological detections and visual digit spans. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between phonological detections and auditory digit spans in preschool-aged children with CIs. With early implantation, the congenitally deaf children were capable of developing age-appropriate PA skill and WM capacity, which have practical implications for aural rehabilitation in this special pediatric population.

Rapid automatic naming and phonological awareness deficits in preschool children with probable developmental coordination disorder.

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have been reported to have a higher risk of dyslexia than children with typical development (TD). Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatic naming (RAN) are known to be predictive of children’s reading development. The present study examined PA and RAN in preschool children with and without probable DCD in Taiwan. In total, 704 children aged 5–6 years old from 25 preschools in Taichung City were included as participants. The probable DCD children performed more poorly than the children with TD on the PA and the RAN tests. Put in deficit terms, 22% of the children with TD, but 48% of the probable DCD children, had a single or dual PA/RAN deficit. Furthermore, it was manual dexterity that bore the unique relationship with RAN. Automatic visual perceptual-motor coordination may be the common processing component that underlies RAN and probable DCD. The early visual perceptual-motor profile of probable DCD children has not been well recognized before.

Phonological awareness in children with developmental language disorder

Children with developmetal language disorder have impaired developmental pattern of language structure. Literature data speak in favor of delay and/or difficulties in development of phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic structure, but the nature of developmental language disorder (DLD) has still not been elucidated. The aim of this paper was to present and analyze data about phonological awareness in children with DLD based on a systematic literature review. Also, we wanted to point out some methods of assessment and stimuli/encouragement in development of phonological abilities. The research presented in the analyzed literature have shown that current knowledge regarding phonological awareness in children with DLD is mainly obtained from comparative stuides of children with developmental language disorder and children with normal language development. A large number of results has revealed that different components of phonological awareness in children with DLD are less developed compared to their peers with typical development. Studies have also presented current assessment techniques and importance of phonological awareness preventive stimulation progams, which are an important indicator/parameter for the development of reading and writing as well as for onset of impairments in learning these skills.

Phonological awareness digital program: a randomized controlled study

The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficacy of the Phonological Awareness Digital Program (PADP) in typically developing preschool children aged 4 to 6 years. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with a total of 49 children assigned to two groups: the experimental group, EG (n=25) and the delayed control group, CG (n=24). Both groups were assessed before and after the implementation of the PADP. A follow-up study for the experimental group was also performed after two months. Outcome measures of phonological awareness skills (task 1: Syllable segmentation task; task 2: Syllable identification task; task3: Syllable omission task; task 4: Onset-rime units segmentation task; task 5: Phoneme segmentation task; task 6: Phoneme blending task) were evaluated at three separate moments.
 The results showed significant improvement in phonological awareness skills for the EG between the first and the second assessments for all the tasks considered. Between the second and third assessment, the results showed a significant improvement for the CG.
 The follow-up study also demonstrated the PADP’s efficacy. The PADP has shown to be an effective program in promoting the development of phonological awareness in children. These findings provide evidence for different professionals to use PADP with preschool children. 

Relações entre idade linguística e consciência fonológica de crianças com transtorno do desenvolvimento da linguagem

ABSTRACT Purpose: to verify whether there is a relation between linguistic age and performance in phonological awareness of children presented with developmental language disorder. Methods: a retrospective study comprising 53 children with developmental language disorder aged between 4 and 7 years old. Their language disorder diagnosis followed the inclusion criteria internationally described and Brazilian standardized tests for language assessment were used. All children underwent phonological awareness and linguistic skills assessment via standardized tests and all data went through statistical analysis. For correlation analysis, the p-value was performed through the Pearson’s test. In the regression analysis the models used expressive and receptive linguistic age as independent variables and the performance in phonological awareness as a dependent variable (p=0,036* and p= 0,048*). Results: the data indicated a strong correlation between language age and phonological awareness skills in children with language developmental disorder. A strong correlation between syllabic awareness and linguistic age was found as well. In addition, phonemic awareness was correlated to their chronological age. All correlation tests were confirmed by regression analysis. Conclusion: the data indicated a strong correlation between linguistic age and phonological awareness in children with developmental language disorders. These findings raise discussion regarding phonemic skills in children under this condition and their literacy process.

The Effect of Poetry Focused Supportive Educational Program to Preschool Children's Phonological Awareness

The study aims to examine the effect of the Poetry Focused Supportive Educational Program (PFSEP), which was prepared for preschool children, on children's phonological awareness skills. In order to support the phonological awareness of preschool children, poetry focused educational program was developed using phoneme awareness, rhythmic utterance and sound games. PFSEP's activity plans cover the phases of word awareness, syllable awareness, rhyme awareness and phoneme awareness, including phonological awareness skills. In addition, while organizing the activities of the PFSEP, care was taken to ensure that it is suitable for practice in the form of play-based activities and small groups in which children can participate more actively. In the research, the pretest-posttest control group was studied in a quasi-experimental design. The research study group was determined by using the easily accessible sampling method among the preschool within the primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the city center of Denizli in the spring term of the 2017-2018 academic year. A total of 32 children, 16 in the experimental group and 16 in the control group, participated in the study. "General Information Form" and "Yangın Erdoğan Erdoğan Phonological Awareness Scale" (YEEPAS) were used as data collection tools. After the pretest was applied to the experimental and control groups, the PFSEP was implemented in the experimental group for eight weeks. After applying the PFSEP, the posttest was administered to the children in the experimental and control groups. As a result of the research, there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group in the total phonological awareness score and all sub-dimension scores of the scale. The retention test applied to the experimental group four weeks after the post-test supports the significant difference. This result shows that the PFSEP is effective in improving phonological awareness skills.

The Relation Between a Systematic Analysis of Spelling and Orthographic and Phonological Awareness Skills in First-Grade Children.

Purpose As an initial step in determining whether a spelling error analysis might be useful in measuring children's linguistic knowledge, the relation between the frequency of types of scores from a spelling error analysis and children's performance on measures of phonological and orthographic pattern awareness was examined. Method The spellings of first-grade children with typical spoken language skills were scored using the Spelling Sensitivity System (Masterson & Apel, 2010a); words were parsed into elements based on phonemes and then assigned a score based on the linguistic skills represented in the spelling. The children also completed more traditional measures of phonological and orthographic knowledge: an elision task and an orthographic pattern awareness task. Results There was a moderate negative correlation between number of elements omitted in the children's spellings (e.g., the child did not represent a phoneme with a letter[s] and performance on the phonological awareness task). There also was a moderate negative correlation between frequency of orthographically based spelling errors (e.g., spelling an element with a letter[s] that could never represent that sound in English) and performance on the orthographic pattern and phonological awareness measures. Conclusions These findings suggest that specific types of scores on the spelling error analysis provided information about the children's phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. They also support continued investigations on the use of a systematic spelling error analysis for measuring phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge and highlight the potential utility of the analysis procedure in the educational setting.

The impact of lexical skills and executive functioning on L1 and L2 phonological awareness in bilingual kindergarten

This study investigated the role of lexical skills and executive functioning on L1 Dutch and L2 English phonological awareness in children enrolled in bilingual Dutch/English kindergarten in The Netherlands (n = 95) and monolingual Dutch kindergarten (n = 83). Participants had an average age of 5 years and 10 months and completed tasks on phonological awareness, lexical skills (vocabulary and lexical specificity), and executive functioning (sustained visual and auditory attention, behavioural self-regulation, and verbal short-term memory) in the L1 Dutch and the L2 English. Dutch phonological awareness was predicted by self-regulation and verbal short-term memory. English phonological awareness was directly predicted by Dutch phonological awareness and visual sustained attention. The results highlight the importance of executive functioning such as sustained attention, behavioural self-regulation and short-term memory in first and second language learning in kindergarten, and support cross-language transfer effects from L1 to L2 phonological awareness among bilingual learners.