Evaluation of phonological sensitivity in preschool age children

The identification and subsequent intervention of preschool age children who are at-risk for developing a problem in reading could prevent a child from experiencing reading failure. Although preliminary support is available for the success of interventions with preschool age children, little research on the early predictors of reading ability has been conducted with young preschool age children. Consequently, schools are hesitant to identify and treat preschool age children who are at-risk for reading disabilities without the research-based evidence of its effectiveness.;An excellent early predictor of later reading ability is an individual's sensitivity to the speech sound structure of oral language or phonological sensitivity. However, the field has not converged on the best way to measure phonological sensitivity. In addition, current measures of phonological sensitivity are limited in their power to predict future reading skill when administered to very young preschoolers.;This study investigates the effectiveness of an experimental phonological sensitivity measure, PSM, developed by the investigator. Two groups of preschool age children participate in the current study: twenty-five children at family risk for dyslexia (AFR) and twenty-five children at no family risk for dyslexia (NFR). In light of research that indicates individuals with dyslexia have weak phonological processing systems, children in the AFR group should perform at a significantly lower level on the PSM than the children in the NFR group even after participants' vocabulary and letter identification abilities are considered.;The findings from this study are encouraging. They confirm that participants in the AFR group perform at a lower level on the PSM than participants in the NFR group. These differences exist even after accounting for participants' vocabulary and letter identification abilities. These results are consistent with previous work that phonological sensitivity sets the stage for phonological awareness, support the notion that more basic levels of phonological processing skills can be assessed in preschool age children, and demonstrate the additional explanatory power of phonological sensitivity. Furthermore, an important implication of these results is that phonological sensitivity can be measured in young preschool age children and the early identification of preschool age children at-risk for dyslexia is possible.