Phonological awareness skills in kindergarten children with and without phonological impairment

Phonological awareness is the ability to manipulate individual speech sounds without respect to meaning. It is recognized as a key component of reading acquisition. Children with phonological impairments are believed to be at great risk for phonological awareness deficits. If children have not fully acquired the speech sounds and sound system of English, they may not be able to identify and manipulate sounds (skills needed to learn to read). Thus, understanding the nature of phonological awareness skills in children with phonological disorders is useful for identifying children who may be at risk of reading failure.;The purpose of this study was to compare phonological awareness abilities in kindergarten children with diagnosed articulation or phonological disorders to the abilities of typically-developing kindergartners. Subjects included 10 children with and 10 children without phonological disorders (matched on age, nonverbal ability, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and classroom teacher). Ages ranged from 5:8 to 6:8. Children attended kindergarten in Palm Beach County, Florida.;Subjects were administered a measure of nonverbal ability, a test of receptive vocabulary, and a test of expressive morphology. Phonology was evaluated using a standardized test of productive phonology (Smit-Hand Articulation and Phonology Evaluation), a multisyllabic word-naming task, and a battery of 10 phonological awareness tasks. Phonological awareness tasks were designed to test skills at all levels of phonological analysis: syllable, intrasyllable (onset-rhyme), and phoneme.;Total phonological awareness scores were calculated and compared for the two groups, and significant group differences were found. Rhyme production subtest scores were also significantly different. Children with phonological impairment scored lower on the phonological awareness tests than their typically developing peers. Phonological error patterns that correlated with phonological awareness scores were percent consonants correct of the items in the multisyllabic word naming task and the use of the phonological process metathesis. Both groups found blending tasks to be the easiest and a final consonant detection task to be the most difficult. Results indicated that some phoneme level tasks (blending) were easier than onset-rhyme level tasks, but another phoneme level task (final consonant categorization) was more difficult than onset-rhyme and syllable-level tasks.