Julia M. Carroll

The development of phonological awareness in preschool children

A short-term longitudinal study was carried out on a group of 67 preschool children. At three points in time over a 12-month period, the children were given tests measuring their syllable, rime, and phoneme awareness, speech and language skills, and letter knowledge. In general, childrens rime skills developed earlier than their phoneme skills. Structural equation models showed that articulatory skills and syllable and rime awareness predicted later phoneme awareness.

Phonological skills are (probably) one cause of success in learning to read: A comment on Castles and Coltheart.

Castles and Coltheart (2004) argued that the causal link between childrens underlying phonological awareness and success in learning to read remains unproven. We argue that the balance of evidence does favor such a causal link. We also argue, however, that learning to read depends on broader language skills and that, like other aspects of development, it needs to be seen in the context of a multicausal system.

An assessment of anxiety levels in dyslexic students in higher education

BACKGROUND It has long been hypothesized that children with learning disabilities, including dyslexia, may be highly vulnerable to emotional consequences such as anxiety. However, research has centred on school-aged children. AIMS The present study aimed to clarify these findings with dyslexic students in higher education. SAMPLES Sixteen students with dyslexia were compared with 16 students with no history of learning difficulties. METHODS Students were asked to complete a written questionnaire concerning trait anxiety levels. They were then told that they would be given a timed reading test and their state anxiety levels were measured using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1983). Finally, their reading was assessed using the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999). RESULTS Dyslexic students showed slower reading speeds than controls. They also had higher levels of state anxiety and elevated levels of academic and social, but not appearance, anxiety. CONCLUSIONS Dyslexic students in higher education show anxiety levels that are well above what is shown by students without learning difficulties. This anxiety is not limited to academic tasks but extends to many social situations. It is proposed that assessment of emotional well-being should form part of the assessment of need for dyslexic students entering higher education.

The Causal Role of Phoneme Awareness and Letter-Sound Knowledge in Learning to Read Combining Intervention Studies With Mediation Analyses

There is good evidence that phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge are reliable longitudinal predictors of learning to read, though whether they have a causal effect remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results of a mediation analysis using data from a previous large-scale intervention study. We found that a phonology and reading intervention that taught letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness produced significant improvements in these two skills and in later word-level reading and spelling skills. Improvements in letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness at the end of the intervention fully mediated the improvements seen in children’s word-level literacy skills 5 months after the intervention finished. Our findings support the conclusion that letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness are two causal influences on the development of children’s early literacy skills.

Literacy and mental disorders

Purpose of review This review examines recent evidence on the comorbidity between literacy problems and psychiatric disorder in childhood and discusses possible contributory factors. Recent findings Recent studies confirm the substantial overlap of literacy problems with a range of emotional/behavioural difficulties in childhood. Literacy problems and inattention may share genetic influences, contributing to associations with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. To an extent, links with conduct problems may be also mediated by attentional difficulties. In addition, findings suggest bidirectional influences whereby disruptive behaviours impede reading progress and reading failure exacerbates risk for behaviour problems. Associations between literacy problems and anxiety disorders are not entirely mediated by inattentiveness. Rather, comorbid anxiety disorders seem likely to arise from the stressors associated with reading failure. Findings in relation to depression are less consistent, but suggest that poor readers may be vulnerable to low mood. Children with autism seem more likely to face problems in reading comprehension than the decoding difficulties more prominent in other disorders. Summary Literacy problems are associated with increased risks of both externalizing and internalizing disorders in childhood, with different mechanisms likely to be implicated in each case. When comorbid problems occur, each is likely to require separate treatment.

The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children's judgment of rime and alliteration

A total of 38 preschool children (3 and 4 years old) were assessed on a set of phonological awareness tasks three times over the course of a year. The tasks used were rhyme and alliteration matching tasks with distractor items that were either semantically or phonologically related to the target. In both tasks, the children found the distractors matched for phonological similarity more difficult to reject than the semantically related distractors or the unrelated distractors. The results emphasize the importance of controlling for global phonological factors when designing phonological awareness tasks. The longitudinal findings are discussed within the context of current theories on the development of phonological representations. The present study investigates the role of global phonological similarity in children’s performance on standard rhyme and alliteration tasks. It is suggested that, when children use global phonological strategies in such tasks, they are making reference to global phonological representations. The relationship between global phonological strategies, vocabulary level, and letter knowledge is also examined. According to one prominent theory (Walley, 1993), throughout childhood phonological representations develop from holistic representations of syllables as unanalyzed global wholes to structured segmental representations of individual phonemes. Although direct experimental corroboration of this theory is limited, it is a conclusion suggested by several different lines of evidence, such as observational studies of language acquisition (Ferguson & Farwell, 1975), psychophysical studies of language perception and production (Nittrouer & Studdert-Kennedy, 1987; Nittrouer, Studdert-Kennedy, & McGowan, 1989), and experimental studies of childhood language processing (Walley, 1988). Walley (1993) suggested that three factors may precipitate the development of segmental representations. The primary factor is the growth of vocabulary in the preschool years. As vocabulary increases, pressures on the lexical system force a restructuring of the words represented there to allow efficient access and

The Roles of Family History of Dyslexia, Language, Speech Production and Phonological Processing in Predicting Literacy Progress.

It is well established that speech, language and phonological skills are closely associated with literacy, and that children with a family risk of dyslexia (FRD) tend to show deficits in each of these areas in the preschool years. This paper examines what the relationships are between FRD and these skills, and whether deficits in speech, language and phonological processing fully account for the increased risk of dyslexia in children with FRD. One hundred and fifty-three 4-6-year-old children, 44 of whom had FRD, completed a battery of speech, language, phonology and literacy tasks. Word reading and spelling were retested 6 months later, and text reading accuracy and reading comprehension were tested 3 years later. The children with FRD were at increased risk of developing difficulties in reading accuracy, but not reading comprehension. Four groups were compared: good and poor readers with and without FRD. In most cases good readers outperformed poor readers regardless of family history, but there was an effect of family history on naming and nonword repetition regardless of literacy outcome, suggesting a role for speech production skills as an endophenotype of dyslexia. Phonological processing predicted spelling, while language predicted text reading accuracy and comprehension. FRD was a significant additional predictor of reading and spelling after controlling for speech production, language and phonological processing, suggesting that children with FRD show additional difficulties in literacy that cannot be fully explained in terms of their language and phonological skills.

Speech prosody and developmental dyslexia: Reduced phonological awareness in the context of intact phonological representations

Recent research indicates that awareness of the rhythmic patterns present in spoken language (i.e., prosody) may be an important and relatively overlooked predictor of reading ability. Two studies investigated the prosodic processing abilities of skilled adult readers and adults with developmental dyslexia. Participants with dyslexia showed reduced awareness of lexical and metrical stress and these skills were found to be significantly associated with, and predictive of, phonological decoding ability. In contrast, the same individuals showed normal patterns of stress based priming at magnitudes similar to controls. These results—suggesting reduced phonological awareness in the context of intact phonological representations—are consistent with recent findings reported in the domain of phonemic processing. Implications for the phonological deficit theory of dyslexia are discussed.

Predicting dyslexia using prereading skills: the role of sensorimotor and cognitive abilities

Background It is well established that phonological awareness, print knowledge and rapid naming predict later reading difficulties. However, additional auditory, visual and motor difficulties have also been observed in dyslexic children. It is examined to what extent these difficulties can be used to predict later literacy difficulties. Method An unselected sample of 267 children at school entry completed a wide battery of tasks associated with dyslexia. Their reading was tested 2, 3 and 4 years later and poor readers were identified (n = 42). Logistic regression and multiple case study approaches were used to examine the predictive validity of different tasks. Results As expected, print knowledge, verbal short‐term memory, phonological awareness and rapid naming were good predictors of later poor reading. Deficits in visual search and in auditory processing were also present in a large minority of the poor readers. Almost all poor readers showed deficits in at least one area at school entry, but there was no single deficit that characterised the majority of poor readers. Conclusions Results are in line with Penningtons (2006) multiple deficits view of dyslexia. They indicate that the causes of poor reading outcome are multiple, interacting and probabilistic, rather than deterministic.

Early predictors of phonological and morphological awareness and the link with reading: Evidence from children with different patterns of early deficit

This study examines the contribution of early phonological processing (PP) and language skills on later phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA), as well as the links among PA, MA, and reading. Children 4–6 years of age with poor PP at the start of school showed weaker PA and MA 3 years later (age 7–9), regardless of their language skills. PA and phonological and morphological strategies predict reading accuracy, whereas MA predicts reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that children with poor early PP are more at risk of developing deficits in MA and PA than children with poor language. They also suggest that there is a direct link between PA and reading accuracy and between MA and reading comprehension that cannot be accounted for by strategy use at the word level.