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BackgroundPhonological awareness refers to the language ability to perceive and manipulate the sounds of spoken words. It is an understanding of the structure of spoken language -that it is made up of words, and that words consist of syllables, rhymes, and sounds. The presence of a relationship between performance in phonological awareness tasks and reading ability is undisputed. Materials and methods100 normal children together with 30 learning -disabled children were evaluated with the Arabic phonological awareness test to detect their performance on phonological awareness. ResultsA large amount of evidence has been accumulated to show that the more knowledge children have about the constituent sounds of words, the better they tend to be at reading. AimMany studies have been conducted to detect phonological awareness de cits in Englishspeaking children, but very few studies have been conducted on Arabic-speaking children.

The aim of this work was to study the function of the left and right cerebral hemispheres concerning linguistic, musical and cognitive abilities, through the evaluation of the deterioration of these domains following lesions of either hemisphere. The study was carried out on 80 subjects (60 males, 20 females) with a mean age of 48 years. Subjects were categorized into four groups, 20 in each. Group I had left brain lesion with dysphasia; group II, left brain lesion without dysphasia; group III, right brain lesion without dysphasia; group IV, control. Patient's evaluation included a dysphasia test, psychometric battery, tests for musical abilities, brain CT scanning and EEG. Group I showed deterioration in the linguistic abilities, while groups II and III had intact abilities. Deterioration in musical abilities was noticed in group III, with normal scores in groups I and II. There was deterioration of the intellectual abilities in all patients' groups, to varying degrees. The significance of the results is discussed.