The influences and outcomes of phonological awareness: a study of MA, PA and auditory processing in pre‐readers with a family risk of dyslexia

Abstract

• First paper to report together morphological awareness (MA), phonological awareness and auditory processing in a pre reading sample of high-risk children.• Demonstrates a MA deficit in child with a family risk of dyslexia prior to reading instruction • Findings of a significant difference between controls and children with a family risk of dyslexia in auditory processing skills related to rise-time awareness.• Early pre-reading MA is shown to be a function of PA. AbstractPhonological awareness's direct influence on reading outcomes has been widely demonstrated, yet PA may also exert indirect influence on reading outcomes through other cognitive variables such as morphological awareness (MA). However, PA's own development is dependent and influenced by many extraneous variables such as auditory processing, which could ultimately impact reading outcomes. In a group of pre-reading children with a family risk of dyslexia and low-risk controls, this study is set out to answer questions surrounding PA's relationship at various grain sizes (syllable, onset/rime and phoneme) with measures of auditory processing (frequency modulation (FM) and an amplitude rise-time task (RT)) and MA, independent of reading experience.Group analysis revealed significant differences between high-and low-risk children on measures of MA, and PA at all grain sizes, while a trend for lower RT thresholds of high-risk children was found compared with controls. Correlational analysis demonstrated that MA is related to the composite PA score and syllable awareness. Group differences on MA and PA were re-examined including PA and MA respectively as control variables. Results exposed PA as a relevant component of MA, independent of reading experience.

Early development and predictors of morphological awareness: Disentangling the impact of decoding skills and phonological awareness

“…Studies of pre-reading children have demonstrated that MA is acquired prior to the onset of formal reading instruction (Berko, 1958, Casalis & Louis-Alexandre, 2000Law et al, 2016). However, this early attainment is often limited to aspects of inflectional morphology, such as tense markers '-ed' and the simple derivations which do not involve phonological shifts (e.g.…”

“…Early MA acquisition has been shown to be dependent on an individual's prereading PA, independent of vocabulary (Carlisle and Nomanbhoy, 1993;Cunningham and Carroll, 2015;Law et al, 2016). Chiat (2001) argued that as children are exposed to speech in context, they segment the target speech stream into available phonological components, which are capable of being generalized or related to the context at hand.…”

“…Through repeated exposure, mappings between speech units and meaning are formed (i.e. "look at the man jumping" while a man is seen jumping (Law et al, 2016)). Studies have demonstrated that more complex phonological shifts between base and derived form are unattainable for many children first learning to read (e.g.…”

“…For this research project, we followed a group of children who were initially described in a previous study that examined pre-reading children with a family risk of dyslexia and non-risk controls (Law et al, 2016). In this study, we will retrospectively reclassify these participants based on literacy difficulties that were observed in second grade to determine MA deficits' relation to the behaviorally observed literacy difficulties across time.…”

“…Although a few studies have demonstrated that MA is acquired prior to the onset of formal reading instruction (Berko, 1958, Casalis & Louis-Alexandre, 2000Law et al, 2016), little is still known about MA's development and early attainment. As children who later are found to develop dyslexia exhibit early literacy struggles and pre-reading phonological awareness (PA) deficits, an understanding of how these deficits influence MA's early development is crucial in understanding MA's role in dyslexia.…”