The Effects of Aging and First Grade Schooling on the Development of Phonological Awareness

Abstract

The independent influences of aging and schooling on the development of phonological awareness were assessed using a between-grades quasie.xperimental design. Both schooling (first grade) and aging (5-7 years) significantly improved children's performance on tests of phonemic segmentation, but the schooling effect was four times larger than the aging effect. The school-'"S effect »' «-y attributed to format reading instruction, whereas the aging effect probably reflects natural maturation and informal exposure to written language. These data support a strong mutual relation between reading acquisition and phonological awareness.Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize the internal phonemic structure of spoken words. It is usually assessed by testing the subjects' ability to isolate and manipulate individual phonemic segments in words.Although a child makes phonemic distinctions as soon as he or she can understand and produce speech, the ability to manipulate phonemic segments consciously develops only around the first grade. For example, Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, and Carter (1974) found that no prekindergarteners, only 17% of kindergarteners, but 70% of the first graders were able to parse words into phonemes.The significant improvement in phonological awareness in first graders may be primarily ascribed to one of two factors (which are not mutually exclusive):(1) cognitive-linguistic skills that mature at about the age of six, independent of formal reading instruction (Bradley & Bryant, 1983); or (2) learning to read in an alphabetic orthography (Berteison, Correspondence and reprint requests to

Age and schooling effects on early literacy and phoneme awareness

“…It follows that older children would begin school with higher levels of phoneme awareness and early literacy than their younger peers due to longer exposure to these activities both at home and in pre-school. This hypothesis is supported by evidence of a significant age effect on phoneme awareness (Bentin, Hammer, & Cahan, 1991;Cunningham & Carroll, in press;Morrison, Smith, & Dowehrensberger, 1995) and emergent literacy (Crone & Whitehurst, 1999;Morrison, et al, 1997) during pre-school.…”

On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes

“…Table 2 shows the raw correlations between measures (below the diagonal), reliabilities of the measures calculated as Chronbach's Alpha across trial subsets (in bold, on the diagonal), and correlations with age group variance partialled out (above the diagonal). Age group based on year in school was used as a developmental variable in the correlations rather than age in months because of evidence that it is a stronger predictor of scholastic skills (Bentin, Hammer, & Cahan, 1991;Cahan & Cohen, 1989). It can be seen that the measures were fairly reliable and all of the correlations were significant.…”

Education and cognitive development: A natural experiment.

“…Nevertheless, Cahan and colleagues (Bentin, Hammer, & Cahan, 1991;Cahan & Cohen, 1989;Cahan & Davis, 1987) considered these potential biases serious and, therefore, have opted to use a different approach, termed the between-grades regression discontinuity design (Cahan & Davis, 1987), in which children nearest the school cutoff are explicitly eliminated from consideration. In a recent study using this approach, Bentin, Hammer, and Cahan (1991) examined age and schooling influences on development of phonological awareness in kindergarten and first-grade children.…”

“…In a recent study using this approach, Bentin, Hammer, and Cahan (1991) examined age and schooling influences on development of phonological awareness in kindergarten and first-grade children. Large samples of children spanning the range of birthdates within a given year were required to isolate the first and last phonemes in spoken words and in self-generated picture names.…”

“…In recent years, alternative methods have been developed for examining age-related versus experience-related (e.g., schooling) changes in cognitive skills (Bentin, Hammer, & Cahan, 1991;Bowey & Francis, 1991;Cahan & Cohen, 1989). In our own work, we have examined the influence of a culturally valued learning experience (i.e., schooling) through use of a "natural experiment" (termed school cutoff) that circumvents some, if not all, of the biases found in other research (Bowey & Francis, 1991).…”