AWARENESS IN PH0N0L06ICALLV IMPAIRED

This study investigated the association between the acquisition of primary phonological ability and the development of phonological awareness. The phonological awareness of 15 moderately phonologically impaired and 15 phonologically normal Cantonese-speaking preschoolers between the age of 4;02 and 5;11, matched on chronological age, language age and gender, was compared. Three aspects of phonological awareness: syllable, phoneme and rhyme awareness were investigated by using the syllable segmentation, phoneme detection and rhyme detection task. Phonologically normal children scored significantly higher on the phoneme and rhyme awareness measures. There was no significant difference for syllable segmentation. Speech intelligibility of the phonologically impaired children was significantly correlated to their performance in the phoneme detection task. It is concluded that phonological awareness, in particular, the phoneme awareness is associated closely with productive phonological ability early in development