Phonological Awareness Tasks Research Articles

Orthographic influences on phonological processing in children with and without reading difficulties: an eye-tracking study

AbstractPhonological processing is an important contributor to decoding and spelling difficulties, but it does not fully explain word reading outcomes for all children. As orthographic knowledge is acquired, it influences phonological processing in typical readers. In the present study, we examined whether orthography affects phonological processing differently for children with current reading difficulties (RD), children with a history of reading difficulties who are currently presenting with typical word reading skills (Hx), and children with typical development and no history of reading difficulties (TD). School-aged children completed a phonological awareness task containing spoken words and pictures while eye movements were recorded. In this task, children had to pair a spoken stimulus word with one of four pictures that ended with the same sound. Within the task, stimulus-target picture pairs varied in the congruency and consistency of the orthographic and phonological mappings of their final consonant sounds. Eye movements revealed that children with typical word reading (the Hx and TD groups) showed better discrimination of the target from the foils compared to peers with underdeveloped word reading skills. All children were more accurate when stimulus-target pairs were congruent and consistent than when they were incongruent or inconsistent. Orthography plays an important role in the completion of phonological awareness tasks, even in the absence of written words and for children with a wide range of reading abilities. Results highlight the importance of considering orthography during interventions for phonological awareness and word reading.

Dynamic assessment of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children

ABSTRACT Dynamic assessment (DA) is a tool used to assess children’s learning potential. Research on English-speaking children indicates that DA effectively diagnoses language disorders in monolingual and bilingual children. However, few DAs have been developed for French-speaking children. This study aimed to examine the validity of a dynamic phonological awareness task for differentiating French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Thirty-eight monolingual and bilingual children, aged 4–8 years, 23 with typical development (TD) and 15 with DLD, participated in the study. They performed a dynamic phoneme segmentation task, in which graduated cues were provided. Children were also administered a nonword repetition (NWR) task, and a modifiability scale, in which the examiner rated the child’s responsivity during the task. Statistical analyses examined what factors influenced dynamic task performance, and calculated the sensitivity and specificity of the tests. Results indicated that four factors emerged as significant in a mixed-effects logistic regression model: age, diagnostic group (TD vs. DLD), modifiability, and the number of phonemes in the target word. Older children who had TD and higher modifiability scores had better segmentation skills than other children. Words with fewer phonemes were also easier to segment than words with greater numbers of phonemes. The dynamic task had good sensitivity in the identification of DLD but less good specificity. Our findings indicate that a dynamic task of phonological awareness has the potential to be used as a diagnostic tool to differentiate TD and DLD.

The Effects of Phonics Training based on Phonological and Morphological Awareness on Reading and Writing Abilities in Children with Reading Difficulties

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to find more efficient intervention methods for children with poor reading by comparing phonics intervention based on phonological awareness and with integrated phonics group including morphological awareness. Methods: 18 children with poor reading skills in elementary school were selected and classified into two experimental groups and a control group. Decoding, paragraph reading fluency, reading comprehension, dictation, and sentence reading and writing tests were administered as assessment tool. Additionally Jung (2014)’s morphological awareness ability task was utilized. Results: First, both experimental groups showed a significant increase in decoding skills. However, in terms of reading comprehension and fluency, there was a significant increase in the integrated phonics training group including morphological awareness, but there was no significant difference in the phonics training group based solely on phonological awareness. The control group did not show a significant increase in all areas. Second, both groups showed a significant improvement in the dictation skills, while the control group did not showed significant difference. Third, both experimental groups significantly increased their scores in phonological awareness tasks and morphological awareness ability tasks. Conversely, there was no significant increase observed in the control group. Conclusion: It is significant that the phonics intervention program, which integrates phonological and morphological awareness for children with poor reading skills, has an effect not only on reading and writing, but also on meta-recognition ability. This indicates that interventions, including morphological awareness training, have a broad impact on the realm of reading.

Do Linguistic Factors Impact Phonological Awareness in L2? A Study of Phonological Awareness of English by Adult Saudi Learners

The study explores the impact of certain linguistic factors on phonological awareness ability in the second language. This study examines the effect of three linguistic factors on Saudi university students’ L2 phonological awareness: the linguistic environment (single vs. clustered), the linguistic affiliation of the phoneme (novel vs. non-novel), and the phonological representation of the lexical item that contains the target phoneme (real-word vs. non-word). The linguistic factors that are examined and controlled in this study represented essential differences between the participants’ L1 and L2, hence highlighting the effect of L1-L2 distance. The participants were 48 university students majoring in English language. Two phonological awareness tasks were administered, a phoneme deletion task and a phonological judgement task, to test phonological awareness at the phonemic and phonotactic levels. The results showed that the linguistic environment of the phoneme had a significant impact on the participants’ L2 phonological awareness. The linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme was another linguistic factor that affected the participants’ L2 phonological awareness. Their perception of novel L2 phonemes was considerably poorer than non-novel phonemes. This result confirms the validity of the linguistic affiliation hypothesis in explaining phonemic awareness in L2. Additionally, the results revealed that the quality of the phonological representation plays a significant role in the participants’ performance on the phonological awareness tasks in L2 and that the lexical status of the item affected this underlying phonological representation. The findings of this study offer theoretical and practical implications for the acquisition and teaching of a second language.

Lexical Morphology as a Source of Risk and Resilience for Learning to Read With Dyslexia: An fNIRS Investigation.

We examined the neurocognitive bases of lexical morphology in children of varied reading abilities to understand the role of meaning-based skills in learning to read with dyslexia. Children completed auditory morphological and phonological awareness tasks during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. We first examined the relation between lexical morphology and phonological processes in typically developing readers (Study 1, N = 66, Mage = 8.39), followed by a more focal inquiry into lexical morphology processes in dyslexia (Study 2, N = 50, Mage = 8.62). Typical readers exhibited stronger engagement of language neurocircuitry during the morphology task relative to the phonology task, suggesting that morphological analyses involve synthesizing multiple components of sublexical processing. This effect was stronger for more analytically complex derivational affixes (like + ly) than more semantically transparent free base morphemes (snow + man). In contrast, children with dyslexia exhibited stronger activation during the free base condition relative to derivational affix condition. Taken together, the findings suggest that although children with dyslexia may struggle with derivational morphology, they may also use free base morphemes' semantic information to boost word recognition. This study informs literacy theories by identifying an interaction between reading ability, word structure, and how the developing brain learns to recognize words in speech and print. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25944949.

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.

Visual attention and phonological processing in children with developmental language disorder

IntroductionDevelopmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a neurobiological condition characterized by insufficient language and communication development, with no underlying physical, sensory, or cognitive explanations. A prominent feature among children with DLD is their struggle with phonological processing, a pivotal skill for later reading proficiency. Recent research suggests that children with DLD may also exhibit impairments in various non-linguistic cognitive abilities, including memory, attention, and perception. Of particular importance is visual attention, which plays a critical role in integrating visual perceptual information with diverse cognitive and linguistic processes.ObjectiveTo characterize visual attention during phonological processing tasks in Colombian children with DLD.MethodologyThis study employed a cross-sectional descriptive experimental design involving 20 children diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and 20 children without language difficulties. All participants underwent language, vocabulary, and phonological awareness tests. Additionally, an experimental task utilizing the eye-tracking method was designed and administered to measure phonological processing with phonological and lexical distractors.ResultsChildren with DLD exhibited diminished performance on phonological awareness tasks, as evidenced by their lower scores. This was further supported by the experimental phonological processing task, where an interference effect was observed in the presence of lexical distractors for word recognition, but not with phonological distractors.ConclusionChildren with DLD demonstrated deficiencies in both phonological awareness and visual attention skills during linguistic and phonological processing tasks. They also exhibit reduced sensitivity in identifying phonological relations such as rhyme. The study discusses these findings along with their clinical implications, emphasizing the importance of assessing online processing abilities in children with DLD and considering the influence of other cognitive abilities on their linguistic performance.

Phonological Awareness of English among Saudi Learners: An Examination of the Role of Lexical Status and Intra-syllabic Phonological Unit

This study explores phonological awareness ability in the second language. Although some studies have examined L2 phonological awareness, most of these studies have not provided sufficient details on the type of stimulus items employed in these studies nor considered the possible effect of some linguistic factors on the results. Thus, the study aims to explore the impact of the lexical status of the item on phonological awareness in L2. In addition, the study examines the preferred intra-syllabic phonological unit in L2 among Saudi university students. Specifically, the study examines the effect of the lexical status (word vs non-word) and the intra-syllabic phonological unit (onset-rime vs. body-coda) on the phonological awareness of English. The participants were 48 university students majoring in English language. Two phonological awareness tasks were administered to test phonological awareness at the intra-syllabic and phonotactic levels. The tasks were an intra-syllabic segmentation task and a lexical decision task. The results showed significant effects of both linguistic factors on the participants’ L2 phonological awareness. The lexical status of the test item had a significant effect on the participants’ performance in the task. The participants performed significantly better in identifying real-words than non-words, which reflects an advanced phonotactic awareness. Finally, the results revealed that the body-coda unit is the preferred intra-syllabic structure for Saudi learners. Therefore, the study provides evidence that the onset-rime hypothesis is not universal and is at least not applicable to Saudi Arabic speakers. The study offers theoretical and practical implications for the acquisition and teaching of L2.

Response to intervention as an identification strategy of the risk for dyslexia.

To develop on intervention process to identify children at risk of dyslexia, based on the Response to Intervention model. Specifically, to identify the pattern of changes in post-intervention performance in tasks of phonological awareness, working memory, lexical access, reading and writing; and to analyze which cognitive functions had a significant effect on the discriminating students at risk of dyslexia. Sample of 30 participants with Reading and writing difficulties, aged 8-11, from public/private schools, students from 3rd to 5th grade. Participants were submitted to a battery of cognitive-linguistic tests, before and after 12 intervention sessions. To monitor their performance, five reading and writing lists of words and pseudowords were applied. We qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed the differences in pre- and post-intervention performance of each participant; and among participants in the post-assessment, to understand the patterns of dyslexia vs non-dyslexia groups. There were statistically significant changes in: rapid automatized naming, narrative text comprehension, phonological awareness, rate and typology of hits/misses in reading and writing, and reading speed. Being the last three variables the most sensitive to discriminate the two groups, all with less post-intervention gains for the dyslexia group. The intervention focused on the stimulation of phonological skills and explicit and systematic teaching of graphophonemic correspondences contributed positively to the evolution of the group's participants. The intervention response approach favored the identification of children with a profile at risk for dyslexia, as distinct from children with other learning difficulties.

Resposta à intervenção como estratégia de identificação do risco para dislexia

ABSTRACT Purpose To develop on intervention process to identify children at risk of dyslexia, based on the Response to Intervention model. Specifically, to identify the pattern of changes in post-intervention performance in tasks of phonological awareness, working memory, lexical access, reading and writing; and to analyze which cognitive functions had a significant effect on the discriminating students at risk of dyslexia. Method Sample of 30 participants with Reading and writing difficulties, aged 8-11, from public/private schools, students from 3rd to 5th grade. Participants were submitted to a battery of cognitive-linguistic tests, before and after 12 intervention sessions. To monitor their performance, five reading and writing lists of words and pseudowords were applied. We qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed the differences in pre- and post-intervention performance of each participant; and among participants in the post-assessment, to understand the patterns of dyslexia vs non-dyslexia groups. Results There were statistically significant changes in: rapid automatized naming, narrative text comprehension, phonological awareness, rate and typology of hits/misses in reading and writing, and reading speed. Being the last three variables the most sensitive to discriminate the two groups, all with less post-intervention gains for the dyslexia group. Conclusions The intervention focused on the stimulation of phonological skills and explicit and systematic teaching of graphophonemic correspondences contributed positively to the evolution of the group's participants. The intervention response approach favored the identification of children with a profile at risk for dyslexia, as distinct from children with other learning difficulties.

Tarefas com base na Fonotática para estimulação de consciência fonológica

The purpose of this paper is to present some fundamental phonotactic concepts and their importance in phonological awareness tasks in literacy. Only after the beginning of their schooling do children start to observe and notice the segmental elements of words. Furthermore, mastery of phonological awareness will determine children’s reading success in school, which in turn affects their proficiency in adulthood (BYRNE; LEDEZ, 1983). In this study, we present a playful way to explore the sonority scale perception with students through the recognition of geometric shapes (circle and straight line), according to the Sonority Syllable Model (SSM), proposed by Basbøll (2005). It is an alternative proposal to the phonotactic description and analysis that uses distinctive features in its sound organization. In our proposal, we use a phoneme-grapheme correspondence, but, as Basbøll (2005) suggests, we firstly establish which one is the prototypical syllable peak, i.e., main/central peak, in order to determine the implicational relations among the segment types. In addition, in a playful way to illustrate this relation, we make use of a set of concentric circles known as Euler’s diagram. This set of circles is a mathematical set used to demonstrate the intersection among elements. Lastly, we show how this adaptation may be used in a pedagogical practice with children and adults in the literacy stage.

Learning to Read Strengthens Functional Connectivity Between the Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex and the Superior Temporal Gyrus During an Auditory Phonological Awareness Task.

It is often assumed that phonological awareness only reflects children's phonological skill. However, orthographic representations have been found to be automatically involved during phonological awareness tasks, which we refer to as automatic orthographic activation. Although previous longitudinal neural studies have addressed how phonological processing during phonological awareness tasks is bidirectionally related to reading skill in developing children, we do not know how automatic orthographic activation plays a role in reading skill. To address this gap, we measured 40 children's reading skill and brain activity during an auditory phonological task at two time points using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Children were 5.5 to 6.5 years old at the first time point and were followed up approximately 1.5 years later when they were 7 to 8 years old. We found that earlier reading skill predicted children's later functional connectivity during onset processing between the left superior temporal gyrus, a phonological region, and the left posterior ventral occipitotemporal cortex, an orthographic region representing letters. This finding, together with previous studies, suggests that learning to read influences phonological awareness not only by refining phonological representations but also via strengthening the automatic mapping between phonemes and letters during spoken language processing.

Relationships Between First and Second Language Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming in Chinese Children with Dyslexia

Relationships Between First and Second Language Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming in Chinese Children with Dyslexia

Analyzing the Student’s Phonological Awareness and its Relation to the Reading Skill in EFL Classroom

Phonological awareness has been claimed as one of the significant factors in learning to read. This paper reported our research on students' phonological awareness in EFL classrooms. We wanted to examine whether the phonological awareness tasks correlate with reading accuracy. Firstly, we analyzed their phonological awareness in the tasks of identification, substitution, addition, and deletion in English phonemes and syllables. Then, we discussed the relationship between phonological awareness and reading skills. We observed the students (N=143) of the even semesters (II, IV, VI, and VIII) at the English Education Department (Academic Year 2021/2022), Universitas Bandar Lampung, Indonesia. From the complete task of knowing students' phonological awareness that has been carried out, there was an increase in the average score from Semester II to Semester VIII students. The highest mean score was found in the student's test scores of Semester VIII (91.2; SD 6.3) and the lowest for Semester II students (62.5; SD 11.4). To test whether the phonological awareness tasks correlated with reading accuracy, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) was calculated, and the results showed that the reading accuracy had a positive correlation either for the phoneme (r = 0.472) and syllable (r = 0.534) tasks and the correlation was significant (p < .01).

Pre-skills of reading and writing in children with developmental language disorder and children with typical language development

<p>Introduction. In addition to the development of spoken language, typical intellectual abilities, preservation of the senses of hearing and sight, phonological awareness and the ability of graphomotor expression are necessary for mastering the skills of reading and writing. With this in mind, the aim of this research is to determine the level of phonological awareness and the ability of graphomotor expression in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with typical language development (TLD). Methods. The sample consisted of 46 children aged five to seven years, who were divided into two groups based on the status of speech and language abilities. The first group consisted of 23 children with DLD, and the second of 23 children with TLD. The FONT test was used to assess phonological awareness, and the Prediction Test for Dysgraphia was used to assess graphomotor abilities. Results. The results of the research show that children with DLD performed poorly on phonological awareness tasks compared to TLD children. Age proved to be a significant factor in differences in the development of phonological awareness. Achievements on the Prediction Test for Dysgraphia show that children with DLD have almost twice the weaker ability of graphomotor expression compared to TLD children. Furthermore, the research results show that there are significant differences in the level of development of graphomotor skills between children of different ages. Also, no significant difference in achievements on the Prediction Test for Dysgraphia or on the FONT test has been found in relation to gender. Conclusion. Children with developmental language disorder had significantly lower achievements on the phonological awareness test and the Prediction Test for Dysgraphia compared to children with typical language development.</p>

Links between musical beat perception and phonological skills for autistic children

ABSTRACT Exploring non-linguistic predictors of phonological awareness, such as musical beat perception, is valuable for children who present with language difficulties and diverse support needs. Studies on the musical abilities of children on the autism spectrum show that they have average or above-average musical production and auditory processing abilities. This study aimed to explore the relationship between musical beat perception and phonological awareness skills of children on the autism spectrum with a wide range of cognitive abilities. A total of 21 autistic children between the ages of 6 to 11 years old (M = 8.9, SD = 1.5) with full scale IQs ranging from 52 to 105 (M = 74, SD = 16) completed a beat perception and a phonological awareness task. Results revealed that phonological awareness and beat perception are positively correlated for children on the autism spectrum. Findings lend support to the potential use of beat and rhythm perception as a screening tool for early literacy skills, specifically for phonological awareness, for children with diverse support needs as an alternative to traditional verbal tasks that tend to underestimate the potential of children on the autism spectrum.

Effect of Integrated Phonological Awareness Intervention for Children with Speech Sound Disorders

Objectives: Some children with speech sound disorders (SSD) are likely to have difficulty with phonological awareness skills and develop reading problems when they reach school age. This study aimed to examine the effect of the integrated phonological awareness intervention for children with SSD.Methods: Three children with SSD participated in the intervention study. All of them were 5 years old and showed consonant accuracy of about 50-80% in word levels of the Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children (APAC) test. They had no previous experience in speech therapy or specific phonological awareness training. Integrated phonological awareness which emphasized production practices for target phonemes as well as phonological awareness tasks were provided to the three children for approximately 12 weeks within a multiple baseline and AB design.Results: All the three children showed improvements in consonant accuracy of spontaneous speech as well as all target phonemes. Also, they showed progress in phonological awareness skills at syllable and body-coda levels. The intervention effects were maintained after the intervention phases were completed.Conclusion: This study confirmed that integrated phonological awareness intervention was effective in improving articulation and phonological awareness skills for children with SSD. It is expected that the intervention would prevent them from showing reading difficulties.

Effect of Integrated Phonological Awareness Intervention for Children with Speech Sound Disorders

Objectives: Some children with speech sound disorders (SSD) are likely to have difficulty with phonological awareness skills and develop reading problems when they reach school age. This study aimed to examine the effect of the integrated phonological awareness intervention for children with SSD.Methods: Three children with SSD participated in the intervention study. All of them were 5 years old and showed consonant accuracy of about 50-80% in word levels of the Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children (APAC) test. They had no previous experience in speech therapy or specific phonological awareness training. Integrated phonological awareness which emphasized production practices for target phonemes as well as phonological awareness tasks were provided to the three children for approximately 12 weeks within a multiple baseline and AB design.Results: All the three children showed improvements in consonant accuracy of spontaneous speech as well as all target phonemes. Also, they showed progress in phonological awareness skills at syllable and body-coda levels. The intervention effects were maintained after the intervention phases were completed.Conclusion: This study confirmed that integrated phonological awareness intervention was effective in improving articulation and phonological awareness skills for children with SSD. It is expected that the intervention would prevent them from showing reading difficulties.

Effects of orthographic transparency on rhyme judgement.

This study investigated the influence of multiliteracy in opaque orthographies on phonological awareness. Using a visual rhyme judgement task in English, we assessed phonological processing in three multilingual and multiliterate populations who were distinguished by the transparency of the orthographies they can read in (N = 135; ages 18-40). The first group consisted of 45 multilinguals literate in English and a transparent Latin orthography like Malay; the second group consisted of 45 multilinguals literate in English and transparent orthographies like Malay and Arabic; and the third group consisted of 45 multilinguals literate in English, transparent orthographies, and Mandarin Chinese, an opaque orthography. Results showed that all groups had poorer performance in the two opaque conditions: rhyming pairs with different orthographic endings and non-rhyming pairs with similar orthographic endings, with the latter posing the greatest difficulty. Subjects whose languages consisted of half or more opaque orthographies performed significantly better than subjects who knew more transparent orthographies than opaque orthographies. The findings are consistent with past studies that used the visual rhyme judgement paradigm and suggest that literacy experience acquired over time relating to orthographic transparency may influence performance on phonological awareness tasks.

Study of a set of reading precursors among Chilean children with Down syndrome.

Learning to read for children with Down syndrome is relevant because of the impact this ability has on learning and the development of autonomy. Previous research has described reading development in this population, but it is not clear if the process and precursors are the same in a transparent language like Spanish. This study explores performance in a set of precursors (phonological awareness, visual recognition, vocabulary, letter knowledge and verbal reasoning) in 42 children with Down syndrome between 6:0 and 10:11 years. We hypothesized that the participants would have a lower performance than previously reported with children with typical development, particularly in tasks of phonological awareness, because the method for reading instruction in Chile with this population is usually the global method. Our results show that the precursors improve with age, that there are differences in performance between the skills assessed, and the ceiling effect was not observed as would be expected for children with typical development for the abilities assessed at these ages, which suggests that in the children assessed the precursors are not consolidated at these ages. These results suggest that the stimulation of phonological awareness and other reading precursors in children with Down syndrome is important for reading development.