Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:31:23.395Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phoneme awareness span: A neglected dimension of phonemic awareness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

John Munro
John Munro*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
*
Department of Learning and Educational Development, University of Melbourne, PARKVILLE Victoria 3052, Phone: +61 (03) 9344 8230, Fax: +61 (03) 9347 2468, E-mail: j.munro@edfac.unimelb.edu.au
Get access

Abstract

The importance of phonemic awareness knowledge in learning to be literate his wellestablished. One dimension of its acquisition, the developmental trend from an implicit awareness of rimes to an explicit awareness of phonemes, has attracted substantial interest.A second dimension, a trend in the amount of phonemic knowledge that can be manipulated, or phonemic awareness span, is examined in the present study. One hundred and sixty children from Preparatory (Prep) to Grade 3 completed five phonological tasks: rhyming, onset-rime segmentation, initial sound recognition, phoneme segmentation, and phoneme substitution. Each task involved words ranging in length from three to five phonemes. Phoneme segmentation and substitution tasks involved words with six phonemes. Over this grade range, phonemic length influenced performance for each task. The nature of the influence varied with grade level; performance for the developmentally simpler tasks was affected at the lower grade levels, whereas the more complex tasks were affected at the higher grades. These trends supported gradual differentiation of phonological knowledge into a network of phonemic units. There are implications for dyslexia subtyping, for reading disabilities diagnosis, and for instructional design.

Keywords

Connectionist theoriesearly literacy developmentphonological developmentphonological network phonemic awarenessphonemic awareness span
Type
Research Article
Information
The Educational and Developmental Psychologist , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , 2000 , pp. 76 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berninger, V.W. (1994). Introduction to the varieties of orthographic knowledge I: Theoretical and developmental issues. In Berninger, V.W. (Ed.), The varieties of orthographic knowledge I: Theoretical and developmental issues (pp.1–25). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Berninger, V.W., & Abbott, R.D. (1994). Multiple orthographic and phonological codes in literacy acquisition: An evolving research program. In Berninger, V.W. (Ed.), The varieties of orthographic knowledge I: Theoretical and developmental issues (pp. 277–319). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Bradley, L., & Bryant, P.E. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read: A causal connection. Nature, 301, 419–421.Google Scholar
Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (1993). Varieties of developmental dyslexia. Cognition, 47, 127–139.Google Scholar
Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simple reading tasks. In Underwood, G. (Ed.), Strategies of information processing (pp. 151–216). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hulme, C., Quinlan, P., Bolt, G., & Snowling, M. (1995). Building phonological knowledge into a connectionist model in the development of word naming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 10, 387–391.Google Scholar
Lenchner, O., Gerber, M.M., & Routh, D.K. (1990). Phonological awareness tasks as predictors of decoding ability: Beyond segmentation. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23, 240–247.Google Scholar
Manis, F.R., Custodio, R., & Szeszulski, PA. (1993). Development of phonological and orthographic skill: A two-year longitudinal study of dyslexic children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 64–86.Google Scholar
McBride-Chang, C. (1995). What is phonological awareness? Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 179–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDougal, S., & Hulme, C. (1994). Short-term memory, speech rate, and phonological awareness as predictors of learning to read. In Hulme, C. & Snowling, M. (Eds.) Reading development and dyslexia (pp. 31–44). London: Whurr Publishers Ltd.Google Scholar
Munro, J., & Munro, K. (1993). Phonemic awareness: A major problem in dyslexia. Australian Journal of Remedial Education, 25, 7–13.Google Scholar
Plaut, D., McClelland, J.L., Seidenberg, M.S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading. Psychological Review, 103, 56–115.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M.S., & McClelland, J.L. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523–568.Google Scholar
Stahl, S.A., & Murray, B.A. (1994). Defining phonological awareness and its relationship to early reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 221–234.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K.E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360–407.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K.E., Siegel, L.S., & Gottardo, A. (1997). Converging evidence for phonological and surface subtypes of reading disability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 59, 114–127.Google Scholar
Van Orden, G.C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading. Memory and Cognition, 15, 181–198.Google Scholar
Van Orden, G.C., Pennington, B.F., & Stone, G.O. (1990). Word identification in reading and the promise of subsymbolic psycholinguistics. Psychological Review, 97, 488–522.Google Scholar
Vandervelden, M.C., & Siegel, L.S. (1995). Phonological recoding and phoneme awareness in early literacy: A developmental approach. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 854–875.Google Scholar
National Foundation for Educational Research (1992). Verbal and Nonverbal Reasoning Test Series. Windsor, Berkshire: NFER-Nelson.Google Scholar
Vincent, D., Crumpler, M., & De la Mare, M. (1996). Reading Progress Tests. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.Google Scholar
Wagner, R.K., Torgesen, J.K., Laughon, P., Simmons, K., & Rashotte, C.A. (1993). Development of young readers’ phonological processing abilities. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 83–103.Google Scholar
Yopp, H.K. (1988). The validity and reliability of phonemic awareness tests. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 159–177.Google Scholar