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THE NATURE OF PHONOLOGICAL AND PHONEMIC AWARENESS

IN LITERATE ADULTS

by

Susan Beth Lorenson

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

In Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsFor the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

In the Graduate College

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Mike Hammond, 01/03/-1,

SL I have a lot of comments, but you should interpret this as a very good thing. I think this is very interesting stuff and absolutely includes MORE than enough for a dissertation. My basic suggestion is that the document now reflects years of revising and has thus gotten ungainly and repeats itself. I want you to cut down the introduction to focus on the matters that are important and only touch on the stuff that doesn't bear on your hypothesis. The other thing that's quite important is the Group A vs. Group B thing. I think those should be collapsed together. I'm pretty sure that's the right thing to do, but you/we need to check that out with LouAnn/Diane. So are you done? No, not yet. But to my mind you DEFINITELY have a dissertation in here. Now all we have to do is extract it. Would it help to talk on the phone? (520) 290-4757 home, (520) 621-5759 office. mh BIG STUFF 80pp before experiments too long and repetitive. Shorten to less than 40pp 80pp before experiments discusses reading a lot, but doesn't do enough on phonology. Beef up phonological background, moving relevant bits from later chapters focus exposition in first chapter(s) on background relevant for your hypothesis. We don't need to know stuff about phonemic awareness that doesn't bear on the hypothesis. Stats on pilot are weird. Show plots of means and do scatterplots for your correlations. I'm not following why you looked at A and B separately. The difference should be noise, no? shouldn't you check them out together, as a single group? My comments change over the course of the document. At first, I'm all hot on getting more phonology and syllable structure into the first chapters. Now I'm thinking that the real key is that you need to get in that syllable structure is partially ambiguous. You could cite all sorts of phonology, but maybe Cutler et al. suffices in making the general argument. This part of the title is kind of empty. Can it be pruned off? Also, the title doesn't say anything about reading.

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(final examining committee approval form to go here)

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STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGNED: ________________________________

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

5

DEDICATION

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Thesis.................................................................................................p.

1.2 Phonemic awareness: definition and issues

1.3. Phonemic awareness and adults1.3.1 Theory 1: The “no-relationship” relationship1.3.2. Theory 2: Phonemic awareness skills play a negligible role in reading1.3.3. Theory 3: Phonemic awareness plays a crucial role in adult reading

1.4. Thesis and motivation1.4.1. Overview of experiments1.4.2. Theoretical considerations1.4.3. Pragmatic considerations

1.5. Organizational structure of the dissertation

2.0 Previous Research on Phonemic Awareness

2.1 Phonemic awareness research on beginning readers2.1.1. Overview2.1.2. Reading readiness2.1.3. The predictive power of phonemic awareness2.1.4. The value of phonemic awareness training2.1.5. Levels of phonemic awareness2.1.6. Summary & implications

2.2. Phonemic awareness research on special populations2.2.1. Overview2.2.2. Phonemic awareness in illiterates2.2.3. Phonemic awareness in literates with nonalphabetic orthographies2.2.4. Phonemic awareness in dyslexics2.2.5. Phonemic awareness in Children with Down Syndrome2.2.6. Summary & implications

2.3. Phonemic awareness and secondary language activities

2.4. Special considerations: the question of orthographic interference2.4.1. The role of orthography in phonological access2.4.2. Pilot: Delete Segment Task

2.5. Summary3.0. The Experiments

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3.1. Overview

3.2. Deletion Experiments3.2.1. Experiment One: Delete Segment Task3.2.2. Experiment Two: Delete Syllable Task3.2.2. Comparison of Experiments One and Two

3.3. Substitution Experiments3.3.1. Experiment Three: Substitute Segment Task3.3.2. Experiment Four: Substitute Syllable Task3.3.2. Comparison of Experiments Three and Four

3.4. Reversal Experiments3.4.1. Experiment Five: Reverse Segment Task3.4.2. Experiment Six: Reverse Syllable Task3.4.3. Comparison of Experiments Five and Six

3.5. Summary of Experiments

4.0. Conclusion

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

ABSTRACT

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1.0 Introduction

1.1 Thesis

This dissertation is an examination of phonemic awareness in literate adults. Phonemic

awareness, the ability to identify and manipulate the sound segments in a word, has long

been associated with reading ability in children. Myriad studies on children’s phonemic

awareness in the last two decades have consistently shown that good readers possess a

high level of phonemic awareness, whereas poor readers do not. As Mann puts it,

"phoneme awareness bears both a logical and a proven relationship to early reading

success. Its presence is a hallmark of good readers, its deficiency one of the more

consistent characteristics of poor readers" (Mann, 1991, p. 260).

Little is known about the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability in

literate adults, however, since no studies have previously been conducted on the subject.

This dissertation reports the results of a study on phonemic awareness in adults, which

was modeled on past phonemic awareness studies with children. The results of the study

indicate that adults, like children, exhibit differing degrees of phonemic awareness, and

that these levels of phonemic awareness are associated with reading ability. The

implications of these findings, both practical and theoretical, are discussed.

An introduction to phonemic awareness is given below, followed by a section on the

possible relationships between phonemic awareness and reading ability in adults, an

expanded thesis statement with an outline of the experiments to be conducted and the


Several studies, right?


In general good, except I think the section on syllables/linguistics is a little disorganized. I'd recast that as a "background" section, with very little on the way it bears on the experiments later. Then later you can do the details. That is, you need a section saying why a linguist should care generally. You need some background sections on various relevant theories of the syllable, and maybe also a brief section on language games from a linguistic perspective.

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motivations for the study, and an overview of the organizational structure of the

dissertation.

1.2 Phonemic awareness: definition and issues

In this section, phonemic awareness is defined, and some of the most salient issues in

previous phonemic awareness research are reviewed.

Phonemic awareness (which shall alternately be referred to in this dissertation by the

abbreviation “PA”) is defined by Stanovich as “the ability to deal explicitly and

segmentally with sound units smaller than the syllable" (Stanovich, 1993, p. 283). That

is, phonemic awareness is both the knowledge that the word cat consists of three distinct

phonemes ([k..æ...t] and not just one inseparable syllable, [kæt]), and the ability to isolate

those phonemes on command (such as stripping the first phoneme off cat and producing

[æt]).

The term "phonemic awareness" has acquired quite a specific meaning in the field of

reading education, referring to various levels of achievement on certain experimental

tasks that are used as diagnostics of reading ability. For the last two decades, the

connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability has been poked, prodded

and otherwise examined by researchers in the fields of Linguistics, Psychology, and

Education.


Of course, you mean segments, not onset-rhyme, right?

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In the last few years, however, phonemic awareness has become something of a hot

topic, and the term “phonemic awareness” has migrated from the jargon of Linguistics

and Educational Psychology into the mass media. It has even become a buzz phrase, a

selling point for a number of products and services. Consider the excerpts on the

following page, which illustrate the marketability of phonemic awareness:

New York Times article on the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the NIH, October 27, 1996

Auditory Discrimination in Depth. We offer three to five day Lindamood A.D.D. workshops which develop phonemic awareness - the ability to judge sounds within words. This awareness underlies decoding and spelling . The techniques begin orally with how speech sounds are articulated, and extend into multi-syllable and contextual spelling and reading. Additional training is available and highly recommended: 1 day on the LAC Test; 3 day practicum workshop with students.

Lindamood-Bell web page

Windows to Reading is a series of programs for students and teachers which will focus on early reading and writing instruction for grades K-3. Orientation Telecast on September 30, 1996. [Programs include:]· Phonemic Awareness· Spelling and Phonics Skill Development....

Windows to Reading promotion on the Web

Reading Who? Reading You! can help children achieve these important reading objectives:· Learn letter-sound correspondence· Develop phonemic awareness...

Description of interactive software © 1996, by Software for Success

Phonemic Awareness #61105-3: Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of later success in reading. This one day training will enable early childhood educators to become familiar with resources and strategies to facilitate phonemic awareness in young children.

UT 1996 continuing education catalog for early childhood educators

Sesame Street, now in its 27th season, continues its literacy campaign, Let’s Read and Write! The program places additional emphasis on beginning reading skills for preschool children and delves into stories, phonemic awareness, writing sight words, and more.

May ‘96 program description for Sesame Street

How do you know if your child is learning what he must to succeed in school? Hirsch and Holdren say a good kindergarten program will......develop children’s phonemic awareness, which helps them understand that the sounds in a word can be thought of as a string of smaller, individual sounds.

Book review by Lisa Faye Kaplan of the Gannett News Service of What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know

In order to develop an understanding of the alphabetic principle, they must become familiar with letter forms and with the idea that spoken words have identifiable sounds in them -- referred to as the concept of phonemic awareness.

Houghton Mifflin web site, promoting a “a rich literacy environment filled with books” in the classroom

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is designed to help children build pre-reading skills, said Jan Davidson, president and founder of Davidson & Associates. It’s irresistible music, rhythms, and rhymes build phonemic awareness.

Press release from Davidson & Associates about their new CD-ROM

Web pages, CD-ROMs, software, seminars: phonemic awareness has been embraced by

the mainstream educational community, clearly not just for journal articles anymore.

What explains this phenomenon?

The phonemic awareness hype is due to one simple fact: phonemic awareness skills have

been proven to have an incontestable, unmistakable connection to reading ability in

children.

Previous research on the phonemic awareness/reading ability connection will be

discussed more fully in the next chapter, but a brief overview is presented here.

The majority of work on phonemic awareness has concentrated on a number of claims:

Children must be "phonemically aware” before they are able to read an alphabetic orthography. (Adams, 1990; Ball & Blachman, 1993). The thrust of this claim is that before children are able to decipher a writing system which is based on sound-symbol correspondences, they must be able to break a word down into its individual sounds (phonemes), so that they are able to learn the relationship between these sounds and the letters (graphemes) to which they correspond.

Phonemic awareness tasks can be used to predict a child's later success or failure in reading. (Stanovich, 1993). This claim posits that a child’s ability to manipulate (substitute, delete, etc.) the phonemes in a word predicts his/her future reading ability. A child who knows that “ice” is “nice” without the first sound will be a better reader than a child who does not understand this relationship.

Phonemic awareness training can prove useful in preparing a child for reading instruction. (Lundberg et. al., 1988; Cunningham, 1990; Hatcher, Hume & Ellis, 1994; Bradley & Bryant, 1983). This claim’s proponents see a causal relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability, and believe that children who are trained in tasks that develop phonemic awareness skills will be better readers than children who do not receive such training.

Reading facilitates phonemic awareness ability. (Tornéus, 1984). This claim is the reverse of claim (1) above, and states that phonemic awareness is not as much a prerequisite of reading or a predictor of reading ability as much as it is a fall-out from reading; those who know how to read an alphabetic orthography can perform phonemic awareness tasks because the task of reading has developed PA skill.

Needless to say, not all researchers on phonemic awareness subscribe to the same theory

of the connection between PA and reading ability. Nevertheless, those who have worked

on elucidating the claims above agree that there is a strong correlation between reading

ability and phonemic awareness. Ball & Blachman (1991) summarize the findings well:

To read or spell phonetically regular words, a child must be aware that words can be broken into phonemes and that each phoneme corresponds to a symbol (or symbols) in our orthography (Ball and Blachman, 1991, p. 63).

That is, reading in an alphabetic system is a process that involves breaking the

"alphabetic code." This decoding includes the application of grapheme-to-phoneme

conversion rules (alternately called graphophonics rules or simply phonics rules), rules

which tell the child that in the word cat, the grapheme “c” corresponds to [k], the

grapheme “a” to [æ], etc.

Although reading involves the application of phonics rules and children must be

phonemically aware to read, it is necessary to understand the important distinction

between phonemic awareness and mere phonics knowledge. The child who is

phonemically aware possesses more than an extensive battery of “x stands for y” rules.

Those [phonics] rules alone are useless unless the child is able to identify and manipulate

the phonemes of a word. The child who has learned his or her phonics rules knows that

“‘c’ stands for [k], ‘a’ stands for [æ], and ‘t’ stands for [t].” The child who is

phonemically aware knows that the isolated phonemes which these rules produce ([k],

[æ], and [t]) yield a word in combination, [kæt], which was once thought of as a single,

impenetrable unit. The child who is phonemically aware is able to effectively use

phonics rules to create and dismantle words.

The phonemic awareness/reading connection is unquestionably strong. The body of

research reviewed in the next chapter has shown that phonemic awareness is more often a

characteristic of good readers than any other measure, including IQ, analytic ability, or

even other linguistic ability (where “linguistic ability” is any language-based skill,

including, but not limited to, phonics knowledge). This last point is particularly striking.

Since phonemic awareness is more strongly associated with reading skill than mere

phonics knowledge, some have suggested that phonemic awareness should be taught,

instead of (or in addition to) teaching phonics. Phonemic awareness training is emerging

as a way to bridge the gap between the often disparate approaches to reading of phonics

instruction and whole language instruction, in which readers are encouraged to read

without relying on explicitly taught rules. It is, perhaps, grounds for a treaty in what have

been dubbed the “reading wars.”

Consider the table below, which illustrates the various qualities of traditional phonics

instruction, 70s-era “whole language” instruction, and phonemic awareness training:


All the cells are empty, no?

Phonics Instruction

Phonemic Awareness Training

Whole Language Instruction

Graphophonic rules taught explicitlye.g., ‘c’ stands for [k]

Graphophonic rules learned without explicit instruction e.g., students are given texts with juxtaposed rhyming words like “cat” and “hat” and eventually figure out that the ‘c’/’h’ difference corresponds to the [k]/[h] difference

Explicit training in identifying the components of a word (phonemes) e.g., students are taught to “sound out” and “break down” words

Educators in the phonics camp believe that the road to reading is paved with explicit

instruction in sound/symbol correspondence rules (grapheme x stands for phoneme y).

Phonics teachers worry that the whole language approach, with its lack of explicit

instruction, leaves many children in the dark. They claim that though whole language

instruction may work for normal children who have been exposed to books from an early

age and who have already learned to make some connections between the spoken and

printed word, it fails children who do have not have this background or who have another

obstacle (e.g., dyslexia) to making sound/symbol connections on their own. The belief is

that children will best learn to read when they are given the proper tools, that is, the set of

rules which draws connections between the 26 letters of the alphabet and the sounds of

English.

Whole language adherents believe that instruction in phonics is confusing, because there

are so many exceptions to the explicitly taught rules (one can’t help thinking of the

George Bernard Shaw observation that fish could be spelled ghoti, with the gh from

laugh, the o from women, and the ti from caption). They believe that children, given

enough time and exposure to language, will figure out the rules on their own in a natural

way. For instance, if a child is repeatedly exposed to Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, in

which the rhyming words “cat” and “hat” are juxtaposed, he or she will eventually

surmise that the letters c and h are responsible for the difference in sound between the

words. Sound/symbol correspondences are not taught, but through the development of

“personal phonics rules...[readers] come to understand the alphabetic system and will

invent ways of relating their own speech to print" (Goodman, p. 108). This “exposure to

print” method of learning allows for the learning of more complicated words. So, when a

reader sees the words face and fake juxtaposed, he or she will use context to figure out

the difference between the two words, and will subsequently create a rule to account for

the difference (k always stands for [k], but c only sometimes does). In theory, the

phonics student would either have to learn a sophisticated rule to tackle face (c stands for

[s] between two vowels), or would be completely thrown off by the c=[k] rule.

Phonemic awareness training shares features with both phonics and whole language

approaches: it is a method of explicit, linguistic instruction, and yet it is not based on the

teaching of inconsistent phonics rules. In phonemic awareness training, children are

taught to play games that foster their phonemic awareness skills. For example, a child

might be given a block for every phoneme in a word (e.g., three blocks for wake, four

blocks for cart). When the first block in a linear series is removed, the child would be

expected to pronounce the remaining word without the first phoneme (ache or art), if the

last block is removed, without the final phoneme (way or car). Note that the

manipulations in this exercise do not rely upon graphophonic rules, and in fact may

“violate” them (wake has four graphemes but three phonemes). Because PA training is

not dependent upon phonics rules, training exercises may also be performed with

preliterate children who have not yet been exposed to phonics rules.

Thus, phonemic awareness training, phonics teaching and whole language instruction are

all quite different approaches to the teaching of reading. With phonemic awareness

training as a novel middle ground, it’s no wonder that educators, parents and software

publishers have begun to jump on the bandwagon.

Despite the extensive research on and recent interest in phonemic awareness, experiments

on the subject have been limited with regard to subject pool. Experiments aimed at

understanding the connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability have been

conducted primarily with children (as in the studies cited above) and special populations,

such as illiterates (Morais et. al.., 1986; Morais et. al., 1991; Koopmans, 1987), literates

with non-alphabetic orthographies (Read, 1986; Mann, 1986; Mann, 1991; Tzeng and

Chang [in press]), dyslexics (Savin, 1972; Lecocq, 1986; Fox and Routh, 1983; Morais,

1983), and children with Down Syndrome (Cossu & Marshall, 1993). There is little, if

any, research on literate adults.1

1.3. Phonemic awareness and adults

Why has no phonemic awareness research been conducted on adults, and just what is the

relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability in adults? Three theories

explaining the dearth of research in this area are explored in this section.

1.3.1. Theory 1: The “no-relationship” relationship

One explanation for the lack of phonemic awareness research in adults is the following:

(1) Adults, after they have attained a certain level of reading competency, turn into whole word readers. They view all words as single, impervious units and thus no longer use nor require their phonemic awareness skills in reading.

This theory has the advantage of intuitive appeal. Certainly, someone who “sounds out”

words when reading comes across as an immature, unskilled reader. Whole word reading

seems quicker and more efficient than the alternative. However, despite the controversy

in the field of phonemic awareness research (much of it lies in dispute over causal 1 In a 1996 Scientific American article on dyslexia, Dr. Sally Shaywitz (a pediatrician,

neuroscientist, and dyslexia researcher) alludes to some promising results on phonemic awareness and adults from the Connecticut Longitudinal Study. The study began in 1983 with the selection of 445 randomly selected kindergartners, and was originally devised to test, as were many studies at the time, the connection between phonemic awareness skills in preliterate and newly literate children and their future reading ability. Shaywitz was particularly interested in the phonemic awareness skills of dyslexics. When the children were in high school (age 15), she tested the connection between their ability to strip phonemes off the beginning of a word (“Say ‘block’ without the ‘buh’ sound”) and their ability to decode single words. She found that “even in high school students, phonological awareness was the best predictor of reading ability” (Shaywitz, 1996, p. 7). Although overall reading comprehension was not tested (just the ability to identify isolated words), normal readers were Shaywitz’s control group (not the focus of her study), and though one could argue that 15-year-olds are still emerging readers, this is the only study I have found that directly tested the connection between phonemic awareness and some measure of reading ability in literate, experienced readers, and the results are quite promising.


You also need to say something here about why we would want to test adults on this? We don't want to do it simply because it hasn't been done.

connections, i.e. is phonemic awareness a prerequisite for alphabetic literacy, or does

reading an alphabet foster phonemic awareness?), whether or not adults are phonemically

aware is not up for debate. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool whole language advocate,

who denies the benefits of phonemic awareness training as part of reading instruction,

would concede that all alphabetic literates are phonemically aware, and must remain

phonemically aware.

Moreover, competent, literate adult readers constantly encounter situations that require

the novel implementation of phonemic awareness skills. Consider the following

situations:

Unknown words. Example: A newscaster, seeing the name Boutros Boutros-Ghali for the first time, has no choice but to “sound out” the name, this implementing phonemic awareness skills and the alphabetic code.

Known words unfamiliar in print form. Example: A reader comes across the word imbecile for the first time in print, and realizes upon sounding it out that it is the word he recognizes in spoken form ([imbesel].

Partial words. Example: A crossword puzzle afficionado does the New York Times crossword every week. In doing so, she often has to strip phonemes off words, to see if they meet certain criteria. For example, if the answer is _e_ert and the clue is something meaningless to her, she will only be successful in solving the puzzle if she can think of words that fit that schema (desert, revert, etc.)

The readers in each of these situations are competent readers, and yet their day-to-day

reading experiences must at times invoke phonemic awareness skills.


Not the transcription I would expect: ['Imb@s`Il].

Goodman (1993), a strong whole language advocate, states that readers have "three

systems of information to bring to any text - graphophonic, syntactic and semantic - and

that each one supports the other two. In the course of making sense of print, we use all

three systems" (Goodman, p. 53). While whole language theorists believe that readers

keep their primary attention focused on comprehension when making sense of a text, they

concede that they “shift their focus to the detail of the text and the cue systems they are

using... when comprehension begins to break down" (p. 83). According to this view,

semantic information provides the most important clues used in reading and drives the

reading process, but the specifics of a particular situation (difficulty, strangeness,

vocabulary, familiarity, nervousness, etc.) may affect which information is used, and may

require the reader to rely on his or her phonemic awareness skills.

Thus, even those most committed to the view of reading as whole-word processing fit

phonemic awareness into the schema, though it plays second fiddle to other processing

mechanisms. This leads us to the whole language view of adult phonemic awareness, and

the second explanation for the dearth of adult phonemic awareness research on adults.

In this section, the theory that adults have no need for phonemic awareness skills was

discussed and quickly refuted. An alternate theory, and one with many adherents,

follows.

1.3.2. Theory 2: Phonemic awareness skills play a minimal, negligible role in adult

reading

Another theory to be considered is this:

(2) Though literate adults are phonemically aware, this awareness plays a minimal role in their reading ability, because it only comes into play when whole word reading and comprehension break down.

This theory holds that competent (adult) readers read differently than beginning readers,

paying less attention to the details involved in reading (like the correspondence between

letters and sounds) and more attention to meaning. Whole language advocates support

this view, and aim to narrow the gap between beginning and experienced readers by

teaching novices that reading is a "psycholinguistic guessing game" (Goodman, 1993) in

which context clues (to a greater degree than graphophonic rules) are used when reading

unfamiliar words. Readers only resort to graphophonic rules as a last-ditch effort; only

when all other avenues (whole word recognition and context clues) have failed do such

rules come into play. Thus, phonemic awareness is not an important part of reading.

Once adults have acquired a baseline (minimal) level of phonemic awareness that can get

them out of sticky reading situations, they turn their attention to comprehension-based

whole word reading.

Possible problems with this theory of reading are discussed in the next section, along

with the third theory of the connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability

in adults.

1.3.3. Theory 3: Phonemic awareness skills play a crucial role in adult reading

There is an alternative to theories (1) and (2) regarding the relationship between

phonemic awareness and adult reading:

(3) Adult reading is an interactive process, in which the ability to apply grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules is crucial, since it may have to take over at any time when other clues fail (losing your place on a page, etc.). Phonemic awareness skills must remain sharp since they may be called upon at any time, not only as a last resort.

This theory was first advanced by Stanovich (1983). As O'Brien (1988) defines the

difference between whole language (comprehension) theory (2) above and this interactive

(comprehension & phonics) theory, "the [former] holds that readers rely less on graphic

and graphophonic information and more on context as they become more adept at reading

[whereas] interactive positions of reading [postulate] that multiple information sources

are used in creating meaning from texts and that the sources used at any given time may

be controlled by a process that compensates for processing weaknesses" (O'Brien, p.

380).

Now, if the context position holds, adults need not hone their phonemic awareness skills,

since they are essentially whole word readers, and the connection between reading and

PA is minimal, and not likely to vary from adult to adult. On the other hand, if the

interactive position holds, readers often turn to graphophonic rules, and, as such, must be

actively phonemically aware. In this case, the level of phonemic awareness of literate

adults remains an interesting, previously unexplored question.


How would such a theory explain the DEARTH of experiments dealing with literate adults???

O’Brien tested the competing comprehension-driven reading vs. interactive reading

theories in a study based on the analysis of reading miscues, and found support for the

interactive theory. Miscues are the mistakes that people make in reading aloud. Not all

mistakes are created equal, though. Some mistakes indicate attention to meaning (saying

“She dunked a doughnut” when the text says, “She dunked a muffin”), whereas others

indicate attention to graphophonic information (“She dunked a muffler”). One of the

assumptions of miscue analysis is that the type of miscue a reader makes indicates the

level of his or her comprehension: "readers who make semantically and syntactically

acceptable miscues that do not result in meaning loss are assumed to be comprehending a

text" (O'Brien, p. 381). In other words, good readers use the semantic and syntactic clues

in a text to make educated guesses about what’s coming up, so miscues that are

semantically connected to the target word should indicate good reading comprehension.

O'Brien conducted an experiment on seventh graders designed to test the relationship

between miscues and comprehension. Subjects were asked to read four passages of

varying difficulty aloud, their miscues were recorded and analyzed, and then those

miscues were compared with the results of post hoc comprehension tests. The results

indicate that the strong context/psycholinguistic position does not hold water. This

position would predict a positive correlation between "good" (context-consistent) miscues

and comprehension, which was found in only one of the four passages used (the most

difficult passage). Moreover, the context position would predict that the best readers

attend to meaning, but O’Brien found that the very best reader did not correct

semantically anomalous miscues as frequently as the worst reader.

O’Brien’s results indicate that readers pay the least attention to context when reading

"easy" passages, which is clearly contra the context position. The whole language

theory/context theory would predict that when reading an easy-to-comprehend passage,

good readers rely heavily on syntactic and semantic information to figure out words.

However, O’Brien found just the opposite. As he puts it, his results indicate that "the

broadest interpretation of such conflicting results across passage content is that oral

reading miscue analysis presents an oversimplification of what readers do to adapt

processing to a variety of texts" (O'Brien, p. 397). The interactive theory, by which

readers - even good readers - often rely on graphophonic converstion (and, by extension,

phonemic awareness) is better able to explain O’Brien’s results.

There are several survey articles and studies on the predictability of text from semantic

and syntactic clues that provide supporting evidence for O’Brien’s conclusions that

reading is an interactive process, and not based predominantly on semantic and syntactic

cuing. For instance:

1. Across a number of studies, the probability of a reader predicting the next word in

a passage from semantic and syntactic information was between .20 and .35,

hardly a safe bet as a main strategy in reading comprehension (Stanovich &

Stanovich, 1995),

2. The words which readers are most able to correctly predict are function words2,

not words bearing semantic content (Gough, 1983), a finding which is difficult to

reconcile with the comprehension-driven theory of reading, and

3. Eye-movement research has indicated that good readers process every letter on a

page, rather than glossing over whole words (Gough, 1983).

O’Brien concludes that the results of his miscue study conflict with the whole language

view of reading, and can be better explained by an interactive view of reading, whereby

readers use different information sources at different times to fill in processing "gaps."

One such information source is graphophonic information. O’Brien’s study then

provides preliminary evidence that a connection between phonemic awareness and

reading may be found in adults, just as it has been with children.

In this section, several possible connections between phonemic awareness and reading in

literate adults have been considered. What has emerged is that this relationship is by no

means dismissable. It is not the case that adults are entirely whole word readers; they

will come across unfamiliar words in their reading, and, according to Goodman, “work

around different possibilities to see if anything might sound right" (p. 50). It is also not

the case that adults rely on their phonemic awareness skills only when comprehension

fails. Though adults are surely better than children at using "context clues" in the

deciphering of unfamiliar words, O’Brien showed that context-appropriate mistakes did

not necessarily indicate better reading ability.

2This may also help explain why in studies in which normal, literate adults are asked to cross out all occurrences of a given letter in a passage, they frequently miss the letters in function words.

It is the case that proficient readers still employ their phonemic awareness skills, the

skills that were so important in learning to read, every day. Adults have a need for

keeping the connections between graphemes and phonemes well-oiled, and yet scant

research has been done on phonemic awareness in adults. Even adults have to deal with

the sticky "details" of reading at times. In this case, those details are graphophonemic

rules, contingent upon phonemic awareness.

1.4. Thesis and motivation

The question explored in this thesis is whether we find the same correlation between

phonemic awareness and reading ability in adults as in children. Goodman suggests that

adults have phonemic awareness skills, but what has not been shown is whether, in

adults, phonemic awareness skill is correlated with reading ability. It has not been shown

that adults, like children, benefit from sharply tuned phonemic awareness skills and that

these skills make them strong and effective readers.

The hypothesis of this study is two-fold:

(1) Although all literate adults are phonemically aware to some degree, they, like children, demonstrate different levels of phonemic awareness (by virtue of talent, inherent linguistic skill, and/or experience).

(2) In adults, as in children, this phonemic awareness is associated with reading ability.

This section is divided into three parts: (1) an overview of the experiments that will test

the above hypothesis, (2) a discussion of the theoretical motivations for these

experiments, and (3) a discussion of the pragmatic motivations for these experiments.

1.4.1. Overview of Experiments

The connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability in adults will be

explored in a series of six experiments. These experiments will be based on previous

experiments conducted with children and special populations, which will be discussed

more fully in Chapter Two. Without delving into great detail in this overview, it is

helpful for the reader to know that previous phonemic awareness experiments have

followed a relatively simple model: gauge a target population’s performance on some

measure of phonemic awareness and on some measure of reading ability, and look for

correlations between the two. For instance, Mann (1986) tested subjects (children) on a

Phoneme Segmentation Test (PST) of phonemic awareness (using the "odd man out"

methodology, in which subjects are asked to identify which word in a series does not

share the same initial, final, or medial phoneme as the others) and on the Woodcock

Reading Mastery Test. She found that scores on the two tests were positively correlated.

It is this basic structure (measuring phonemic awareness and reading ability and looking

for correlations) that is used in the experiments in this study.

A certain challenge lies in constructing experiments that determine the phonemic

awareness of adults, however, because all literate adults, by virtue of their reading

experience, are to a certain degree phonemically aware. Although it is relatively easy to

draw a phonemic awareness line-in-the-sand with children (i.e., Child A says that cat has

three sounds, whereas Child B says cat has one sound; therefore, Child A is phonemically

aware, whereas Child B is not), it is more difficult to distinguish levels of phonemic

awareness in adults.

Adams (1990) identifies five levels of phonemic awareness that can be used to classify

the experimental tasks that have been used in past experiments with children. She points

out that in evaluating the role of phonemic awareness in reading ability,

it is neither the ability to hear the difference between two phonemes nor the ability to distinctly produce them that is significant. What is important is the awareness that they exist as abstractable and manipulable components of the language (Adams, 1990, p.65).

Adams’ levels of phonemic awareness are listed below in increasing order of

sophistication. This order also indicates how well their mastery correlates with

subsequent reading acquisition; the tests described in the next chapter have shown that

mastery of the highest levels of phonemic awareness is most likely to be connected to

reading ability.

Each level is listed with an example of a phonological awareness task that might be used

to assess it:

1. “The most primitive level....involves nothing more than an ear for the sounds of

words.” (Adams, p. 80).

Ex. Nursery rhymes: children (ranging in age from 3 months to 4 years) were tested on their knowledge of five popular nursery rhymes, and it was found that their ability to recite these rhymes “was strongly and specifically

related to development of more abstract phonological skills and of emergent reading abilities” (p. 80)

2. The next level "requires not just sensitivity to similarities and differences in the

overall sounds of words, but the ability to focus attention on the components of their

sounds that make them similar or different" (p.80)

Ex. Oddity tasks, in which children are given a list of words with a phonemic contrast in the beginning, middle or end of the word (e.g. pig, hill, pin) and asked "Which of these doesn't belong?"

3. The third level requires that "the child have a comfortable familiarity with the notion

that words can be subdivided into those small, meaningless sounds corresponding to

phonemes, and second, that she or he be comfortably familiar with the way phonemes

sound when produced 'in isolation'" (p. 80).

Ex. Blending tasks, in which the experimenter gives the child segments in isolation ("/m/.../a/.../p/") and the child is asked to put them together ("map"), and syllable splitting tasks, in which children are asked to split the rime of a syllable from its onset (producing "eel" and "ice" when the experimenter says "feel" and "mice").

4. The fourth level requires that "the child have a thorough understanding that words can

be completely analyzed into a series of phonemes....[and can] so analyze them,

completely and on demand" (p. 80).

Ex. Phonemic segmentation tasks, in which children were given a word and asked to "tap out" how many sounds (phonemes) it contained (so, "map" should get three taps).

5. The fifth and final level, the most sophisticated level of phonemic awareness, requires

that "the child...be able to add, delete, or move any designated phoneme and regenerate a

word (or a nonword) from the result" (p. 80).

Ex. Phoneme manipulation tasks, in which children are asked to leave out an initial, medial, or final phoneme in the pronunciation of a word (e.g. "Say 'hill' without the /h/"; "Say 'monkey' without the /k/," etc.).

Because adults have had years of experience with language, tasks falling into the lowest

levels of Adams' classification will be too compressed; all literate adults are able to

contrast, blend and count the phonemes in a simple word with relative ease. Therefore,

the tasks most useful in the differentiating of adults will be phoneme manipulation tasks

(which fall under the highest level of phonemic awareness).

The subjects, literate university students, will be tested on a variety of phonemic

awareness tasks, and then the results will be compared to their performance on two GRE

tests: (1) a reading comprehension test and vocabulary test, and (2) a test of analytic

ability. The first will be used to determine the subjects’ reading ability (and the

correlation between phonemic awareness and reading ability), whereas the second is a

control measure, to ensure that any correlations between phonemic awareness and

reading ability are not the result of mere cognitive ability, but rather some reading-

specific skill.

The structure of the phonemic awareness portion of the experiment is as follows. Subjects

will be asked to perform three different tasks (a deletion task, a substitution task, and a

reversal task) that require them to manipulate two different types of linguistic units

(syllables and segments), for a total of six tasks in all. This design is illustrated in the

table below:


…most likely…

Segment-based tasks Syllable-based tasksDeletion Delete Segment Task (1) Delete Syllable Task (2)Substitution Substitute Segment Task (3) Substitute Syllable Task (4)Permutation Reverse Segment Task (5) Reverse Syllable Task (6)

Examples of each of these tasks are given below, using the word frantic and some

possible responses (other response possibilities will be discussed in Chapter Three).

Experiment One: Delete Segment TaskInstructions: What would the word ‘frantic’ sound like if the first sound were

taken off?Response: [ræntik]

Experiment Two: Delete Syllable Task Instructions: What would the word ‘frantic’ sound like if the first syllable were

taken off?Response: [tik]

Experiment Three: Substitute Segment Task Instructions: What would the word ‘frantic’ sound like if the first sound were

replaced by the first sound in ‘blasted’?Response: [bræntik]

Experiment Four: Substitute Syllable Task Instructions: What would the word ‘frantic’ sound like if the first syllable were

replaced by the first syllable in ‘blasted’?Response: [blæstik]

Experiment Five: Reverse Segment Task Instructions: What would the word ‘frantic’ sound like if the first sounds in the

two syllables were reversed?Response: [trænfik]

Experiment Six: Reverse Syllable Task Instructions: What would the word ‘frantic’ sound like if the two syllables were

reversed?Response: [tikfræn]


I feel like I don't have enough background here yet to appreciate these tasks. For me, it would help to have a little linguistic/structural background on why just these.

Previous studies on phonemic awareness have shown that tasks which require syllable

manipulation are the easiest for subjects to complete, whereas tasks which require

segment manipulation are the most difficult to complete. Syllabic awareness tasks require

only a low level of phonological skill (probably falling into Adams levels one through

three) found in preliterate children and illiterates. Segmentation tasks like those above

(falling into Adams level five), require a sophisticated level of phonemic awareness that

seems to require alphabetic experience. Therefore, it is predicted that within each task

type, subjects will perform best (on the basis of error rate) on syllable tasks and worst on

segmentation tasks.

The predicted correlation with reading ability should be clear: those subjects who

perform best on the segment manipulation tasks, thus showing the most sophisticated

phonemic awareness, should also be those who perform best on reading tests. Syllable

tasks will serve as a control, since all literate adults should possess the ability to

manipulate syllables.

In section 1.3. above, the issue explored was why we might believe there is a connection

between reading ability and phonemic awareness in literate adults. A related issue is the

importance of such a connection. Why should the Linguistic and Educational

communities care about a correlation between reading and phonemic awareness in literate

adults?


Yes!

There are both theoretical and pragmatic reasons for exploring the nature of phonemic

awareness in literate adults. Let us explore each of these in turn.

1.4.2. Theoretical considerations

The experiments conducted for this study require literate adults to participate in

phonological experiments. In the experiments, described in further detail below and

presented fully in Chapter Three, subjects are asked to perform a variety of phonological

tasks, including the deletion, reversal, and substitution of syllables and phonemes in

words. The results of these experiments can also contribute to theories of phonological

processing. The following three theories, listed in order of increasing specificity, are

supported by the results of experiments in this dissertation:

10 The syllable, rather than the phoneme, is the basic unit of phonological

processing;

20 Ambisyllabicity exists in English syllables; and

30 [s] is extrametrical in English syllables in certain positions.

Although the phonemic awareness studies in this thesis are not specifically designed to

test any of the above theories, because the experiments conducted require adults to

process and manipulate various phonological units, the results are informative as to the

structure of those units.


Good, but I think you need a general statement about what a linguist might think is the connection between our elements, segments, syllables, etc. and reading. THEN you can discuss the details of our elements.

First, the experiments support the idea that the syllable is the basic unit of processing, by

showing that adults perform significantly better on tasks in which they are asked to

identify and manipulate syllables than those in which they are asked to identify and

manipulate phonemes. Arguments that the syllable is the basic unit of processing are

grounded in the work of Mehler, Dommergues, and Frauenfelder (1981). In this work,

French subjects were asked to listen to various words, monitoring for a target syllable

(for example, [pa]). Upon hearing the target syllable in an input word, they were to press

a button, indicating whether a match had been detected. The experimenters considered

two alternate theories of processing: either the subjects were processing input words

phoneme-by-phoneme or syllable-by-syllable. If the subjects were using the phoneme as

their basic unit of processing, there would be no difference in the time it took subjects to

detect the target in words beginning with identical phoneme sequences. Consider the

example below:

target sound: p...a... p...a...

input: p...a...l...a...s p...a...l...m...i...e...rresult: match match

In both cases, the match occurs two phonemes into the target word, so detection of [pa] in

pa.las should be no faster or slower than detection of [pa] in pal.mier. This is not what

Mehler et. al. found, however. Subjects were significantly slower in detecting the [pa] in

pal.mier (that is, detecting a CV target in an input word beginning with a CVC syllable).

These results are quite understandable if the syllable is viewed as the basic unit of

processing:

target sound: pa pa

input: pa...las pal...mierresult: match mismatch

Since the target [pa] matches the first syllable in pa.las, but not in pal.mier, the match in

the first is detected significantly faster. Mehler et. al. conclude that the only logical

solution is that subjects process words in terms of syllables and not phonemes.

All previous research on phonemic awareness in children and special populations

suggests that syllabic awareness is an innate ability and phonemic awareness is learned.

If the syllable is the basic unit of processing, we would expect that its detection and

manipulation are basic, innate abilities, and the experiments in this study provide support

for that theory. The experiments require subjects to delete, reverse and substitute the

syllables and phonemes in various words. It will be shown that in all the experiments in

this study, subjects performed significantly better on experiments requiring syllable

manipulation than those requiring phoneme manipulation. Using the word frantic as an

example, subjects found it significantly easier to:

· delete the first syllable in the word (yielding [tik]) than the

first phoneme in the word (yielding [ræntik]),

· substitute the first syllable in the word (yielding [blæstik])

than the first phoneme in the word (yielding [bræntik]), and

· reverse the syllables in the word (yielding [tikfræn]) than

the phonemes in the word (yielding [trænfik]).

These findings show that for adults, like children, syllabic awareness tasks are easier than

phonemic awareness tasks across-the-board; the specific nature of the task is irrelevant.

This bolsters the theory that syllabic awareness is innate and, in turn, that syllables are

the basic units of processing.

Interestingly, when Cutler, Mehler, Norris, and Segui (1986) attempted to replicate the

Mehler et. al. task cited above in English, they ran up against a brick wall, failing to find

evidence for the syllable as the primary unit of speech processing. The data in this study

are consistent both with the theory of the syllable as the basic unit of processing, and with

the Cutler et. al. findings. This is because follow-up studies to the Cutler et. al. study

have suggested that their failure to replicate the original study stems from the fact that

phonemes in certain syllables exhibit ambisyllabicity (membership in more than one

syllable). This is a theory supported by the experiments in this study. This brings us to

the second contribution these experiments have to make to phonological theory: the

experiments conducted provide support for the ambisyllabicity of certain phonemes in

English syllables.

Let us first review some background work on ambisyllabicity in English. Classic theories

of syllabification produce conflicting interpretations of English syllables. The Maximal

Onset Principle (MOP) (Pulgram, 1970) says that when the consonants in a word can be

syllabified in more than one way, the preferred syllabification is that which places as

many consonants as possible in the onset. Following the MOP, then, the syllabification


Give an example here.


Good. Would you also expect that any correlation with reading would be less in the syllable-based tasks?

of the word fresco is fre.sco. The Sonority Dispersion Principle (SDP) (Clements,

1988), however, has a different story to tell. It says that the correct syllabification of a

word results from maximizing sonority dispersion in the onset and minimizing it in the

coda. According to this theory, then, the correct syllabification of fresco is fres.co.

Kahn (1976) was among the first to propose that the syllabification of a word like fresco

might not be as black-and-white as either the MOP or SDP would indicate. Kahn’s

theory contends that in fresco, in which the first syllable is stressed, the [s] sound is

ambisyllabic - a resident of both syllables.

In recent years, a great deal of research has been conducted on the ambisyllabicity of both

medial consonant clusters and single consonants in English. Treiman and Zukowski

(1990) conducted a series of experiments to determine what effect phonotactics, stress,

vowel length, the MOP and sonority have on the syllabification of medial clusters.

Legality was by far the most important factor; subjects syllabified words like atlases and

confetti (in which the medial consonant cluster would be illegal both at the beginning and

the end of a word) between the two consonants (at.lases and con.fetti) between 99% and

100% of the time.

Other factors affecting syllabification were not nearly so definitive. Treiman and

Zukowski found that in cases in which both consonants of a medial consonant cluster

could legally belong to the first syllable, and in which that first syllable was stressed, the

MOP was violated (for the second syllable) and both consonants were placed in the first


Picture…

syllable between 3% (in a written syllabification task) and 6% (in an oral syllabification

task) of the time. For example, pontiff was sometimes syllabified as pont.iff in a written

syllabification task, and pont.tiff in an oral syllabification task. So, a stressed first

syllable followed by an unstressed syllable attracts consonants.

A final set of experiments considered the role that stress and vowel length play in

syllabification. In words like master and metric (first syllable stressed and containing a

short vowel) the first medial consonant was placed in the first syllable between 78-86%

of the time (in a written task) or ambisyllabic between 43-49% of the time (in an oral

task). This is in apparent violation of the MOP. However, in words like cloister and

apron (first syllable stressed and containing a long vowel) it was more likely that both

consonants would be placed in the second syllable (61-72% of the time, in an oral task).

So, a syllable with a short vowel attracts consonants.

Finally, Treiman and Zukowski considered the effect of second syllable (primary) stress

on syllabification. They found that in words like madrid and estate, the clusters were

placed in the second syllable 41-80% of the time (less in s-clusters than in other clusters).

Again, this is an example of a stressed syllable attracting consonants.

The simplest way to sum up these complicated interactions is that syllables with both

short and stressed vowels try to “grab” as many consonants as they can without violating

phonotactic rules.3 The same factors seem to be at play in the syllabification of single

intervocalic consonants. Treiman & Danis (1988), paying particular attention to the

sonority of the medial consonant, found in an oral task that in words with short and/or

stressed first syllable vowels, medial sonorants were placed in the first syllable about half

the time (between 40-50%) and obstruents were placed in the second syllable about half

the time (49-58%). Since this means that the other half of the time the subjects either

judged the medial consonant ambisyllabic or placed it in the other syllable, these findings

are not very conclusive. Meador and Ohala (1993) found slightly more robust findings

in a written task. They found that medial consonants in a stressed-stressless environment

were judged ambisyllabic 67.9% of the time (as opposed to 32.1% of the time when the

first syllable was stressless). This trend was even more apparent when the vowel in the

first syllable was lax (i.e. palace). In these cases, the medial consonant was judged

ambisyllabic 75.8% of the time. In the syllabification of single consonants, as with

consonant clusters, stress and vowel length play an important role; consonant type is less

important.

To sum up the findings on the syllabification of medial consonants in bisyllabic words,

then

· Syllabication must produce legal syllables (virtually unviolable),

· Syllables with stressed vowels attract consonants (to both their onset and

coda), and

3 To be clear, short syllables with vowels attract consonants to their codas only. Hammond (1993) attributes the affinity medial consonants have for short vowels to a foot-based weighting rule in English. In this rule, unreduced syllables are minimally bimoraic, which can satisfied by resyllabifiying a consonant from the right, resulting in ambisyllabicity.


You might cite the English book instead.

· Syllables with lax vowels attract consonants to their codas.

The relevance of these findings to the experiments in Chapter Three is as follows: since the experiments

require subjects to undertake syllable manipulation tasks, whether or not a medial consonant is

ambisyllabic determines whether a subject’s response should be deemed correct. Consider the case of the

Delete Syllable Task, in which subjects are asked to strip off the first syllable of a word. The theory of

syllabification adopted greatly affects whether a given response should be judged as correct or incorrect, as

illustrated in the following chart:

TEST ITEM Maximize Onset Sonority Dispersion Ambisyllabicity

fresco fre.sko fres.ko fres.ko or fresk.ko or fres.sko

baby be.bi be.bi be.bi or beb.bi

If ambisyllabicity exists in English syllables, it is difficult to justify one correct

syllabification for fresco and baby. In fresco, the first syllable is stressed and contains a

lax vowel that would seem to suggest the fres.co syllabification. Still, Treiman and

Zukowski found that fresc.co and fres.sco syllabifications were possible (9% and 43% of

the time, respectively). In the case of baby, the first vowel is tense, suggesting the

syllabification ba.by. However, Meador and Ohala found that these cases were

syllabified bab.by over 20% of the time.

add page or two on specifics of theories, giving definitions

Depending on which theory of syllabification is adopted, the correct response to the

Delete Syllable Task for the item fresco is either [sko] (by the MOP), [ko] (by the SDP),

or either of these (by Trieman & Zukowski). It will be shown in Chapter Three that if


Not sure you need to do this or what precisely you have in mind here.

there is not ambisyllabicity in English syllables, and an early explain theory of

syllabificaion is adopted, the experimental results for the experiments in this dissertation

fly in the face of everything we know and expect about adult phonemic awareness. If we

are forced to adopt either the Maximize Onset Principle or the Sonority Dispersion

Principle as the correct theory of syllabification in coding subjects’ responses, rather than

allowing ambisyllabicity, adult subjects perform quite poorly on a very simple task: the

deletion of the final syllable in a word. Since school-age children are able to perform this

task with remarkable accuracy, these findings are simply nonsensical.4 On the other

hand, if correct responses are coded taking into consideration ambisyllabicity, adults

perform with the expected competence on the Delete Syllable Task.

The final, and quite specific, contribution of these experiments to linguistic theory is that

the experiments support the characterization of [s] as an extrametrical element in some

environments. The issue surrounding word-initial s-clusters is this: s-clusters violate the

sonority hierarchy ([s] is more sonorous than [t], and yet is further removed from the

syllable nucleus in sticky) and so [s] has been classified by some as extrasyllabic

(Clements and Keyser; 1983). Selkirk (1982) proposed a different explanation for the

anomalous behavior of s-clusters, positing that s-clusters at the beginnings of words were

actually complex onsets. segments? In deleting the first phoneme, subjects may be

deleting the first licensed (non-extrasyllabic) element, or deleting a complex segment,

which can’t be broken down any further. Either way, the status of [s]-consonant

4 Though syllable deletion experiments with children contain stimuli that are easier that those in the experiments here (an issue which will be discussed in a later chapter), this difficulty is presumably offset by the much greater linguistic sophistication of literate adults.


I'm getting a little confused here.

sequences affects the coding of subject responses in Chapter Three. Consider the

following chart: predictions not clear; part of onset vs. extrasyllabic vs. part of complex

single segment

TEST ITEM Response to Delete Segment Task,if [s] is part of cluster

Response to Delete Segment Task,if [s] is extrasyllabic

sticky tiki iki

species pisiz isiz

In the first two experiments described in Chapter Three, subjects are asked to delete the

initial phonemes and initial syllables of a word. It is predicted that subjects will fare

better on the syllable deletion task (because syllable knowledge is innate and taps into a

lower level of phonological awareness) and that subjects’ performance on the delete

phoneme task will be related to their reading ability. If correct responses are coded

assuming that [s], in an initial cluster, behaves like any other initial phoneme (such that

the correct response in the Delete Initial Phoneme task for the item sticky is [tiki]), the

results of the experiments here are unexpected and extremely difficult to explain.

foreshadowing hard to follow If, on the other hand, [s] in initial clusters is treated as an

extrametrical element and responses are coded accordingly (such that the correct

response in the Delete Initial Phoneme task for the item sticky is [iki]), the results, though

still unexpected, can be explained in the confines of a theory of adult phonological

awarenesss. This enigmatic statement will be discussed fully in Chapter Three.

To sum up, the experiments in this dissertation are not designed to directly test any

particular theory of syllable structure or syllable access. However, in coding and


Yeah, I think you're doing too much detail on implications of experiments. Maybe the thing to do in this chapter is simply say that you'll need several theories as background, do that background in a separate section(s). Then you can allude very briefly to what your experiments say. Here, you sort of put the cart before the horse, no?

interpreting subjects responses, certain theories about the syllable must be assumed. The

results in this study can best be explained by a theory of the syllable that assumes that the

syllable is the primary unit of processing, that ambisyllabicity exists in English syllables,

and that [s] is extrametrical in certain environments in English syllables. be more

explicit about theory of syllabification assumed

1.4.3. Pragmatic considerations

In the previous subsection, the theoretical motivations for the experiments in this

dissertation were discussed. There are also pragmatic motivations for fleshing out the

exact nature of phonemic awareness and its connection to reading ability in adults.

If the correlation between reading ability and phonemic awareness in adults is shown to

be as strong as in children, there would be great consequences for adult reading

programs. At least three types of programs would benefit from the knowledge that there

is correlation between reading ability and phonemic awareness in adults:

(1) Adult literacy programs,

(2) English-as-a-second-language programs (or any such programs in which the

L2 employs an alphabetic orthography), and

(3) Reading enrichment programs.

First, let us consider the case of adult literacy programs, in which illiterate adults wish to

learn to read and write an alphabetic orthography. Research with children indicates that

phonemic awareness and reading ability are highly correlated, and all effective readers

are phonemically aware. Adams (1991) claims, "toward the goal of efficient and

effective reading instruction, explicit training of phonemic awareness is invaluable" (p.

331). Perhaps, then, phonemic awareness training, rather than mere phonics training,

should be an essential element of adult literacy programs. Ball & Blachman (1991)

conducted a study in which they compared the reading performance of three groups of

children who received various kinds of training. One group was given traditional phonics

(sound-symbol) instruction, a second group received phonics and phonemic awareness

instruction (by being taught phoneme deletion and manipulation "games"), and a third

(control) group received no instruction. They found that although the group which

received both phonics and phonemic awareness instruction outperformed the other

groups, "instruction in letter names and letter sounds alone did not significantly improve

the segmentation skills, the early reading skills, or the spelling skills of the kindergarten

children who participated in the language activities group, as compared with the control

group" (B&B, p. 49).

Are we missing the boat in adult literacy programs? Should we do away with Hooked on

Phonics and teach adults how to play language games? Bagemihl (1988) points out that

segment-reversing language games only appear in languages with alphabetic

orthographies, and concludes that "an alphabetic writing system may be a prerequisite for

a segment reversal ludling [language game] to appear in a language...It seems that the

presence of an alphabetic writing system is necessary for the establishment of some

metalinguistic awareness of the notion of 'segment'; beyond this, however, the

phonological system takes over as the primary basis for reversal" (p. 485). Perhaps, rather

than waiting for segment-based language games to fall out of languages with alphabetic

orthographies, we should use them on the road to teaching such orthographies. An early

theory that there is a critical period for phonemic awareness (Morais, 1986) has come

under fire (Morais, 1991), so there may be nothing preventing adults at any age from

honing their phonemic awareness skills and, in turn, their reading skills. in the wrong

place?

If there is a phonemic awareness/reading connection in adults, this training would also

prove useful for adults learning a language with an alphabetic orthography as a second

language. If the adult’s first language has a non-alphabetic writing system, the benefits

of phonemic awareness training in adults are clear: phonemic awareness in an essential

part of effective reading. However, even if the adult reads and writes an alphabet (and is

thus phonemically aware), phonemic awareness training may be useful. As O’Brien’s

study (discussed earlier in this chapter) showed, effective adult readers read interactively,

relying heavily on graphophonic information. Since the second language is sure to

contain phoneme-grapheme correspondences which are new to the adult learner and thus

more a conscious part of reading, a phonemic awareness “refresher” (that is, training in


I would think the preceding paragraph should go much earlier.

the honing or development of phonemic awareness skills) could help in the acquisition of

the second [written] language.

Finally, if phonemic awareness is correlated with reading ability in adults, the

development of phonemic awareness skills could prove a successful part of a reading

enrichment program. Perhaps alongside Ways to Enrich Your Word Power or an Evelyn

Wood-style speed-reading course could sit a phonemic awareness training program,

designed to improve adult reading ability by fostering greater phonemic awareness skills.

1.5. Organizational structure of the dissertation

This chapter began with a definition of phonemic awareness and a brief overview of the

issues raised in phonemic awareness/reading research with children. The motivation for

examining the PA/reading relationship in adults was explored. Finally, an outline of the

experimental design was laid out, followed by a discussion of the theoretical and practical

issues to be raised in the course of this study.

The organization of the remainder of the dissertation is as follows. The next chapter is a

review of previous research relevant to the issue of phonemic awareness in literate adults.

It begins with a review of past phonemic awareness literature on children and special

populations, summarizing previous research in the field, followed by a brief review of

research on orthographic interference in phonological tasks, including an experiment

designed to determine the nature of that interference.

Chapter Three describes the six phonemic awareness experiments outlined above, and the

final chapter is a conclusion, tying together the results of the experiments with previous

research on phonemic awareness, and exploring the theoretical and pragmatic

implications of the findings in this study.

2.0 Previous Research on Phonemic Awareness

This chapter deals with previous research that is relevant to the issue of phonemic

awareness in literate adults. Among the questions that will be explored in this chapter

are:

1. What is the exact nature of the connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability? Is one a prerequisite for the other, or do the two develop simultaneously?

2. Are there levels of phonemic awareness, or is it a developmental on/off switch, in that it is either present or absent?

3. Is phonemic awareness teachable?

4. Why do some people develop phonemic awareness, and others not?

5. Other than explicit instruction in an alphabetic orthography, what types of activities foster phonemic awareness?

6. How might knowledge of a specific orthography affect a subject’s ability to perform a test of phonemic awareness?

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first two sections explore previous

research on phonemic awareness and reading, and the last two sections discuss previous

research on metalinguistic abilities in adults.

Section One is a review of what is by far the most thorough area of research on phonemic

awareness: the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability in beginning


I'd add in something on what does linguistics say about this? (or having done it briefly in the previous chapter?)

readers. In this section, questions (1)-(3) are discussed. The second section is also a

discussion of phonemic awareness research, focusing on special populations (illiterates,

dyslexics, etc.) who struggle with phonemic awareness. Section Two pays particular

attention to question (4), in the context of question (1). In the third section question (5)

is addressed directly, in a discussion of activities that foster phonemic awareness.

Finally, in Section Four, the question of orthographic interference in phonological

processing tasks is discussed (question (6) above).

The chapter concludes with a summary of past findings in phonemic awareness research,

and implications for the experiments in Chapter Three.

2.1 Phonemic awareness research on beginning readers

2.1.1. Overview

In this section, past research on phonemic awareness in children will be reviewed, so as

to frame the six experiments in Chapter Three in their proper context. Though this

dissertation is an examination of phonemic awareness in literate adults, and though

phonemic awareness studies have been conducted on illiterate adults, dyslexics, and other

special populations (see next section), all research on phonemic awareness has grown out

of the original body of research on phonemic awareness and reading ability in children.

The vast majority of past research on phonemic awareness conducted with newly literate

or preliterate children has centered on the following four interrelated claims:

1. Children must be "phonemically aware"5 before they are able to read an alphabetic orthography.

2. PA tasks can be used to predict a child's later success or failure in reading.

3. PA training can prove useful in preparing a child for reading instruction.

4. There are different levels of phonemic awareness.

These are very strong claims with some very strong implications. Researchers have

suggested a number of ways that phonemic awareness tasks might be integrated into the

grade school curriculum: (1) as a screening tool to identify those children most likely to

encounter difficulties in reading, (2) as an accompaniment to traditional phonics

instruction for all students, and (3) as an alternative to traditional phonics instruction

(Mann, 1993).

The degree of consensus on each of these claims is discussed in more detail in the

subsections immediately below. The subsequent sections examine "outside" findings on

PA, touching upon illiterates, literates with non-alphabetic orthographies, dyslexics,

children with Down syndrome, and secondary language activities.

Let us begin with a review of each of the seminal phonemic awareness claims above, in

turn:

2.1.2. Reading readiness

5 Where "phonemically aware," when it is defined, is defined as the ability to perform well on phonemic awareness tasks.

1. Children must be "phonemically aware" before they are able to read an alphabetic orthography.

Ball & Blachman (1991) make a claim which is made by many others, based on the

following intuitively appealing assumption about learning to read:

To read and spell, the beginning reader must make use of the alphabetic code. Thus, the student must come to realize that words can be broken into syllables and phonemes, and that the phoneme is that unit in the speech stream represented by the symbols in an alphabetic script. To a person with well-developed phoneme awareness, our alphabetic system appears to be a reasonable way to represent our language. To those with little or no phoneme awareness, the system probably appears arbitrary. (Ball & Blachman, 1991, p. 51)

They later say that "to read or spell phonetically regular words, a child must be aware that

words can be broken into phonemes and that each phoneme corresponds to a symbol (or

symbols) in our orthography" (Ball & Blachman, 1991, p. 63). Below is a simple

illustration of the stages in a child’s phonemic awareness development:

1. [sn] SUN

2. [sn]

SUN3. [s... ...n]

S...U...N4. [s... ...n]

S...U...N

In stage (1) the child may recognize the aural stimulus [sun] as referring to the big ball of

light, and may recognize the printed word “SUN” as referring to the same object, but he

or she has not necessarily made any direct (phonological) connection between the oral

and written word. In stage (2), the child recognizes that [sun] and SUN are connected,

but is not able to abstract that knowledge - it is a fixed, limited piece of information. In

stage (3), the child has developed phonemic awareness, and can “hear” the word sun as

consisting of three distinct phonemes (and, similarly, has learned the alphabet and sees


It seems a bit fanciful to have such a stage before the next one. That is, how would a person realize that there are three "things" before knowing what those things are?

“SUN” as three distinct letters). Finally, in stage (4), the child has learned the connection

between the distinct phonemes of [sun] and the distinct graphemes of “SUN.” This

knowledge is abstractable, because it can be applied to other correspondences of [s] and

“S,” for instance.

This oversimplified schema demonstrates how reading is the application of appropriate

grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules (the "alphabetic code"), which require that the

child is able to identify and manipulate the phonemes in a word.

Breaking the alphabetic code thus requires phonemes to be "dug out of their normal,

subattentional status" (Adams, 1990, p. 294). Children can only figure out the system of

the alphabet when they learn that a word like sun, which they perhaps previously viewed

as a single unit, can be broken down into smaller units (phonemes), and that these smaller

phonological units correspond to letters (graphemes). To Adams and other phonemic

awareness researchers, this requires a step beyond from the normal (innate) way of

perceiving language, which is syllable-based. Children need to be taught that syllables

can indeed be broken down further, and that the resultant units (phonemes) correspond in

a regular fashion to letters.

Whole language advocates view things differently. They do not agree that phoneme-

grapheme rules (which comprise the alphabetic code) need to be taught, nor do they agree

that phonics knowledge is a prerequisite for reading. Goodman (1993) argues that this

alphabetic coding is an "unnatural process" and that "we can liberate children from letter-

by-letter processing of text" by teaching them to view words as whole units and

encouraging them to use semantic clues to figure out visually unfamiliar words.

However, whole language advocates do concede that phonemic awareness is important in

reading; they simply feel that children can figure it out for themselves once they start

reading, rather than being taught a set of rules which are plagued by exceptions. The

phonics teacher tells Johnny that cat begins with [k] and that is spelled with a “c,” and the

whole language teacher gives Johnny a book with many cat/hat rhymes, until he figures

out for himself that the sound and letter similarity between the words isn’t mere

coincidence (and that the sound differences correspond to the “c”/”h” difference). Either

way, he learns that cat can be broken down into three distinct units, and this is the

beginning of phonemic awareness.

2.1.3. The predictive power of phonemic awareness

The second claim about phonemic awareness is:

2. PA tasks can be used to predict a child's later success or failure in reading.

This is far and away the most studied claim about phonemic awareness. Adams (1991)

says that "the familiarity of the letters of the alphabet and awareness of the speech

sounds, or phonemes, to which they correspond, are strong predictors of the ease or

difficulty with which a child learns to read." Stanovich (1993) echoes this sentiment,

pointing out that the phonemic awareness/reading connection is independent of general

intelligence: “[phonemic awareness tasks are] the best predictors of the ease of early


'propose'; we don't know what anybody is feeling.

reading acquisition - better than anything else that we know of, including IQ" (p. 331).

An even stronger statement comes from Mann (1993), who argues that either the

presence or absence of strong phonemic awareness skills is significant: "Phoneme

awareness bears both a logical and a proven relationship to early reading success. Its

presence is a hallmark of good readers, its deficiency one of the more consistent

characteristics of poor readers" (p. 260)

Mann's study is outlined in the previous chapter; she found that children who

demonstrated the highest levels of phonemic awareness on the basis of their invented

spellings and segmentation ability turned out to be the best readers. The same

connections have been found with many other researchers (Bradley & Bryant, 1983,

1985; Fox and Routh, 1975, 1980; Stanovich, Cunningham & Cramer, 1984;

Lundberg, Olofsson & Wall, 1980; Mann & Liberman, 1984, among others). In each of

these studies, preliterate children were tested on a variety of phonemic awareness tasks,

including, but not limited to, the following:

Task Type Sample instructions Answer

Phoneme blending Put /m/.../a/.../p/ together and what do you get? [mæp]

Phoneme segmentation What sounds do you hear in the word hot? [h]...[a]...[t]

Phoneme counting Tap out the sounds in map. 3 taps

Phoneme matching Do pipe and pen begin with the same letter? yes

Deleted phoneme What sound do you hear in meat that is missing in eat? [m]

Phoneme oddity Which of these doesn’t belong? pig, hill, pin hill

Task Type Sample instructions Answer

Phoneme deletion What would is left if you take off the first sound in nice? [ays]

Phoneme substitution What would feel sound like if it started with [m]? [mil]

These task descriptions are all drawn from Adams (1990) and Stanovich (1983).

In these studies, children’s performance on phonemic awareness tasks was recorded,

often along with their performance on (1) other phonological tasks, (2) other cognitive

tests, and (3) reading and spelling tests. The other phonological tasks test less

sophisticated levels of children’s linguistic abilities, and may include the tasks above

conducted with syllables as the unit of manipulation (i.e., syllable counting, in which

children are asked to tap out the syllables in a word), or even lower-level tasks (i.e., the

ability to recite nursery rhymes). The other cognitive tests are usually IQ tests, and the

reading tests are standard school measures of reading ability, such as the Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test and the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test.6

Each of these classic phonemic awareness studies came to the same conclusion:

preliterate children who perform best on phonemic awareness tests turn out to be the best

readers. Moreover, syllable-based tasks and other tasks tapping into low-level

phonological awareness do not correlate strongly with reading ability. As Adams (1990)

states:

6 The specific tasks and tests used in each study are given in the next chapter, where parallels are drawn in experiments with adults.


Right!

It is neither the ability to hear the difference between two phonemes nor the ability to distinctly produce them that is significant. What is important is the awareness that they exist as abstractable and manipulable components of the language (p.65).

So, in the table above, children who perform well on segment deletion tasks are more

likely to be good readers than those who only do well on counting tasks, as the latter

require a lower level of phonemic awareness.

The view of phonemic awareness as a predictor of future reading ability has been

criticized on the grounds that it may be tapping into past reading experience, rather than

future reading ability. Children who score well on PA tests are those who have watched

Sesame Street, been read to by their parents, been encouraged to write at home, etc.

Thus, it is likely that some children who fail to perform well on PA tests do so because of

missed early reading experiences. Does performance on phonemic awareness tasks reflect

potential for future success in reading, or merely gage past reading experience? While

both Adams and Stanovich believe that children who do well on phonemic awareness

tasks will be successful in reading, both also acknowledge that the relationship between

phonemic awareness and reading ability is a murky one. Adams says that the situation is

a bit of a "catch 22...[because] children who have...acquired a solid level of phonemic

awareness before entering school have also begun to read before entering school"

(Adams, p. 8). In other words, it may not be that phonemic awareness per se is a good

predictor of later reading ability, but that early reading experience makes for better

readers. Using her own five-year-old son as an example, Adams notes that between


Two separate issues seem to be confused here. One is what the units are that are manipulated: segments vs. syllables. A separate issue is how those units, whichever they are, are manipulated: counting, extraction, reversal, etc.

being read to and watching educational television, John had had 2000+ hours of indirect

reading instruction before even entering a classroom.

No studies have seperated the two? Stanovich (1993) is quick to acknowledge the

correlation between phonological awareness and prior exposure to reading, but does not

think that this renders the results of phonemic awareness tasks in any way invalid. He

says, "phonological awareness...is a good predictor [of success in reading] not just

because it is an incidental correlate of something else, but because phonological

awareness is a foundational ability underlying the learning of spelling-sound

correspondences" (p. 284). Mann also agrees that the arguments about whether

phonemic awareness gauge past reading experience are difficult to sort out, and

ultimately immaterial: "from a practical standpoint, surely it is an important first step to

learn that a child is deficient in phoneme awareness, whatever the basis of the deficiency"

(Mann, p. 268). And how can such a child be helped? This brings us to the next claim:

2.1.4. The value of phonemic awareness training

3. PA training can prove useful in preparing a child for reading instruction.

Adams (1991) claims that "toward the goal of efficient and effective reading instruction,

explicit training of phonemic awareness is invaluable" (p. 331). What follows are

summaries of studies conducted on the value of phonemic awareness training, in

conjunction with other methods of reading instruction:


Interesting, but how much space should you spend on this? Does it bear on your hypothesis?

Phonemic awareness training vs. no training. Tornéus (1984) conducted two early

experiments on phonemic awareness and reading. In the first, she examined the

correlation of performance on four PA tasks (segmentation, blending, positional analysis

and deletion) with reading and spelling ability. She found (as expected from research

cited in the last section) a significant correlation. In her second study, she examined the

role of phonemic awareness training on reading ability by comparing the reading

performance of three differently trained groups: a control, a lower level task, right? not

difference between the last two groups? "sound properties" group (which was trained on

attention to rhyme), and a group which was specifically trained on segmentation ability.

She found that the last two groups outperformed the control, and so concludes

"metaphonological abilities have a causal influence on reading and spelling" (p. 1357).

Phonemic awareness training & phonics instruction vs. phonics instruction alone vs.

no training. One problem with the Tornéus study is that it does not pit phonemic

awareness instruction against traditional reading instruction; it only examines the

benefits of phonemic awareness instruction versus no instruction at all. Ball &

Blachman (1991) conducted a study in which they compared the reading performance of

three groups which received various kinds of training. One group was given traditional

phonics (sound-symbol) instruction, a second group received phonics and phonemic

awareness instruction (by being taught phoneme deletion and manipulation "games"

along with the sound-symbol correspondences), and a third (control) group received no

instruction. They found that although the group which received both phonics and

phonemic awareness instruction outperformed the other groups, "instruction in letter

names and letter sounds alone did not significantly improve the segmentation skills, the

early reading skills, or the spelling skills of the kindergarten children who participated in

the language activities group, as compared with the control group" (B&B, p. 49). That is,

phonics instruction alone did not lead to an improvement in reading skills; it had to be

combined with phonemic awareness instruction to have a significant effect.

Phonemic awareness training vs. no training (again). In contrast to the Tornéus study,

Lundberg et. al. (1988) found that first graders given phonemic awareness training did

not outperform a control group of first graders (given no instruction) on reading tasks.

Second graders in the same study did outperform their counterparts who were not given

phonemic awareness instruction. The authors hypothesize that with the earliest of

readers, phonemic awareness training alone may not be effective in facilitating reading

skills and may have to be combined with traditional reading instruction (as was done in

the Ball & Blachman study). By second grade, most participants in the study would have

already learned sound-symbol correspondences, thus explaining the difference in results

between the two age groups.

So, given the Lundberg et al. and Ball and Blachman findings (that neither reading

instruction alone nor PA awareness alone is the best training approach), what's a reading

teacher to do?


Do you actually define this somewhere?

Phonemic awareness training & phonics instruction vs. phonics instruction alone vs.

phonemic awareness training alone. Hatcher, Hulme, and Ellis covered all the bases

in their 1994 study. They tested 7-year-old poor readers given a variety of training:

reading (phonics) with phonemic awareness training, phonics alone, phonemic awareness

training alone, and a control group which received no training. Even though all groups

were given the same amount of training, they found that the phonics with phonemic

awareness training group showed the most progress in reading (though the phonemic

awareness group showed improvement in phonological tasks). Bradley and Bryant

(1983), in a similar study, had found the same results. awk why not this one first?

Hatcher et. al. conclude that "the difference between the group trained in sound

categorization alone and the group who also received training in letter-sound

correspondences is notable... A natural implication of this result is that the integration of

training in phonological skills with letter-sound training (or more broadly with

phonemically based reading instruction) may be particularly effective" (p. 42). They

form the conclusion that "training in phonological skills in isolation from reading and

spelling skills may be much less effective than training that forms explicit links between

children's underlying phonological skills and their experiences in learning to read." (p.

42) This is called the "phonological linkage hypothesis."

In an attempt to test the weight of the phonological linkage hypothesis, Cunningham

(1990) examined the difference between implicit and explicit phonological training on

reading ability. In a 10 week training session, she gave one group of first graders "skill


I'm getting a little confused at all the studies cited. Can you give some sort of summary of all of them and some roadmarkers as we go through them?

and drill" (implicit) PA training, in which subjects were trained in how to segment the

phonemes in a word, or blend phonemes together to make a word. The students were

trained with the usual phonemic awareness training methods: phoneme deletion,

phoneme oddity, and phoneme discrimination tests (taken from the Williams program

"The ABDs of Reading"). Another group was given "metalevel" (explicit) PA training in

addition to the implicit training. This training was similar to the implicit phonemic

awareness training, but also emphasized the connection between phonemic awareness

skills (i.e., segmentation and blending), sound-symbol correspondences, and the

development of reading skills. The metalevel group was essentially taught the

phonological linkage hypothesis. Cunningham found that the children in the metalevel

training group performed better on reading tests (though not in phonemic awareness

tasks) why so than those who just received phonemic awareness training: "the children

who reflected upon and discussed the value, application, and utility of phonemic

awareness for the activity of reading at an explicit level performed significantly better on

a transfer measure of reading achievement than the skill and drill experimental group"

(p. 429). Cataldo & Ellis (1988) also found that explicit phonemic awareness was more

highly correlated with reading than implicit phonemic awareness.

Thus, the “phonological linkage hypothesis” is consistent with each of the studies cited

above: phonemic awareness training, when combined with traditional phonics training,

improves children’s reading skills more than no training, or training in phonics alone.

Whereas phonemic awareness training alone is effective is controversial, explicit

phonemic awareness training may be even more valuable.

A final note about phonemic awareness training: in addition to direct phonemic

awareness training programs, Adams also notes that learning to spell can be considered a

form of phonemic awareness training for children. She says,

The process of inventing spelling is essentially a process of phonics. Not surprisingly, then, the phonetic appropriateness of prereaders' invented spellings is found to be predicted by their level of phonemic awareness and to predict their later success in learning to read words....Evidence that invented spelling activity simultaneously develops phonemic awareness and promotes understanding of the alphabetic principle is extremely promising. (Adams, p. 387)

Read (1986) and Treiman (1993) have both done extensive work with children's invented

spellings. Treiman sees the process of learning to spell as reflective of the development

of phonemic competence, as demonstrated in the following chart

(from Treiman, 1993)

Precommunicative (no phonetic or phonological structure)

Semiphonetic (idea that letter=segment; ex. CRPT for "carpet")

Phonetic (no ommissions)

Traditional (mistakes reflect learned correspondences; ex. EIGHTEE for "eighty")

Correct

When children receive training in phonemic awareness, they will succeed in learning to

read (or so the argument goes). Mann (1993) found a correlation between the

sophistication of children’s invented spellings and their reading ability. This correlation

could be because the best invented spellers have, in a sense, received a dose of phonemic

awareness training.

A final conclusion drawn from phonemic awareness studies in children is discussed in the

next section.

2.1.5. Levels of phonemic awareness

4. There are different levels of phonemic awareness.

This is a claim that has already been discussed above, since it is impossible to separate

from other phonemic awareness issues. Children may innately possess a certain level of

phonological (syllabic) awareness, and they eventually work their way up to a level of

phonemic awareness that enables them to decipher the alphabetic code and become

literate. Adams (1990) identifies five levels of phonemic awareness as tested by

phonemic awareness tasks (these were outlined in the introduction) and Treiman (1983)

identifies levels of phonemic awareness which are revealed in children’s spelling errors

The models are related; children at the most primitive level show sensitivity to the sounds

of words, and children at the most sophisticated level are able to manipulate phonemes in

addition, deletion, and movement tasks. The best future readers show the most

sophisticated phonemic awareness.


Down?

2.1.6. Summary & implications

Though there is overwhelming agreement that phonemic awareness and reading ability

are connected, the exact nature of the connection is more controversial. One criticism of

the phonemic awareness/reading ability connection is that it is tautological (since

"children who have...acquired a solid level of phonemic awareness before entering school

have also begun to read before entering school" (Adams, p. 8)). Another criticism is that

researchers in the field of phonemic awareness are too committed to a cause-effect

relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability, and have failed to consider

that some third factor may be affecting these skills (that is, the researchers have a

pedagogical ax to grind in the promotion of phonemic awareness curricula).

The phonological linkage hypothesis merits attention, but it also draws attention to the

fact that PA awareness research done on children attempts to draw conclusions about the

connection between PA and reading ability by examining children's reading ability, thus

muddling itself in a chicken-and-egg argument about the relationship between phonemic

awareness and reading skill. For this reason, nontraditional research on phonemic

awareness (research examining the nature of phonemic awareness in populations other

than preliterate children) also needs to be examined to gain a richer understanding of the

issues involved.

2.2. Phonemic awareness research on special populations

2.2.1. Overview

The claims about phonemic awareness and reading drawn from studies with children may

be questioned on a number of grounds. Is phonemic awareness really a prerequisite for

reading? Is there a causal connection between phonemic awareness and reading? Is

phonemic awareness training valid and/or useful? Are there other, as yet unexplored,

implications of these claims?

Work on phonemic awareness has not been limited to American children in phonics

programs. Moreover, some of the outside work on PA can shed light - or at least raise

questions - about the connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability. We

shall look at work done on PA in illiterates, literates of nonalphabetic orthographies,

dyslexics, and children with Down Syndrome.

2.2.2. Phonemic awareness in illiterates

Morais et. al. (1986) conducted a study on Portuguese illiterates and ex-illiterates (who

learned to read and write as adults). The study compared the two groups with respect to

their performance on a phoneme manipulation (PA) task, a syllable manipulation task,

and a melody segmentation task. The findings were that "the illiterates vs. ex-illiterates

difference was greatest in tasks designed to tap phonemic analysis, irrespective of the

particular operation to be performed, was present but smaller in tasks involving syllables

and absent in a non-linguistic segmentation task (melody segmentation)" (Bertelson

et.al.., p. 114).


What is this?

The only significant difference was in the phonemic segmentation abilities of the

illiterates (who could not do PA tasks) and the ex-illiterates (who could do PA tasks).

From this finding, the researchers conclude that "while sensitivity to rhyme and analysis

into syllables can develop up to some point in the absence of the experience normally

provided by reading instruction, analysis into phonetic segments requires that experience"

(Morais et. al., 1986, p. 45). So, phonemic awareness is not a maturational development,

but rather a fallout from reading instruction. If this is true, it would seem to violate the

claim that children need to be phonemically aware to begin reading; rather, it appears

that they would become phonemically aware because of reading experience.

Morais (1991) appeals to the idea of "levels" of awareness, but he is talking about

phonological vs. phonemic awareness: "phonological awareness subsumes at least the

following: awareness of phonological strings (a global, nonanalytical level of

awareness); awareness of syllables; awareness of phonemes (also called segmental

awareness); and awareness of phonetic features...it is widely accepted that literacy

instruction is not necessary to elicit all these forms of phonological awareness" (Morais,

1991, p. 6). Since illiterates can manipulate syllables but not phonemes, they do have a

certain level of phonological awareness, an awareness which develops (or more

correctly, is present) without knowledge of an alphabetic orthography. Morais concludes

from the Portuguese study that though phonological awareness may develop in the

absence of reading instruction, phonemic awareness requires that experience.

The Morais studies raise the question, is experience with an alphabet necessary for the

development of phonemic awareness? The study was criticized by Koopmans (1987),

who argues that the "difference between literates and illiterates on the phonetic

segmentation task may be attributable to the lack of formal schooling as such in the latter

group" (Koopmans, P. 110). It is not so clear, according to Koopmans, that illiterates

perform poorly on segmentation tasks simply because they lack phonemic awareness.

Rather, "unschooled subjects, it appears, do not do well on such tasks, not only because

the task contents are often unfamiliar, but even more so because the activity of working

with abstract material is in itself unfamiliar to them" (Koopmans, p. 100). Morais et. al.

disregard this criticism, citing the fact that illiterates did not have impaired performance

on a melody segmentation task, which presumably taps into the same abstract and formal

skills as speech segmentation.

So, the main finding of PA studies with illiterates is that PA follows from (and requires)

experience with an alphabet, rather than developing on its own. What does Morais make

of findings in later studies that illiterates showed significant improvement in

segmentation skills after 20 or 30 training trials? Could Koopmans be right that they did

not understand the task? Morais claims "no," and that there is "no clear indication that

these improvements reflect phonemic awareness...the improvements were due to a

nonsegmental strategy" (Morais, 1991, p, 15). He attributes the improved performance to

the specific training in a task-driven strategy, rather than the speedy acquisition of true

phonemic awareness.

2.2.3. Phonemic awareness in literates with nonalphabetic orthographies

The Morais et. al. study suggests that phonemic awareness absolutely requires alphabetic

experience and will not develop in its absence. On the surface, studies by Read et. al

(1986) and Mann (1986) support this. The study by Read et. al. compared the

performance of two groups of Chinese adults. The first group knew only the traditional

logographic (character) writing system, whereas the second was also familiar with the

pinyin alphabet. Only the latter group (that had received explicit training in the

alphabetic system) performed well on phoneme awareness tasks. Mann's study compared

the performance of American children and Japanese children on syllable and phoneme

manipulation tasks. Though both groups of children performed well on the syllable

manipulation task, only the American children, familiar with an alphabetic writing

system, performed well on a phoneme manipulation task. Japanese children, who knew

only a syllabary, performed poorly on these tasks.

Thus, the Read and Mann studies at first appear to support the idea that PA develops only

in the face of direct alphabetic instruction.

However, the data on non-alphabet readers is not so simple. Mann (1991) cites an

unpublished study of Chinese literates (by Tzeng and Chang) that concludes that there

can be phonemic awareness in the absence of knowledge of pinyin. Mann states that,

“readers of the logography found phoneme deletion an "easy" task, despite being illiterate

in pinyin. Those who were totally illiterate performed less well" (Mann, 1991, p. 59).

So, the literate adults could be easily trained to perform well on a PA task despite lack of

alphabetic experience.

In a similar finding, Mann (1986) found that Japanese fourth graders, despite lacking an

alphabet, performed well on PA tasks (Japanese sixth graders, having learned romanjii, or

the roman alphabet, perform well on these tasks, too, as expected). This suggests that

"with increasing age and educational experience Japanese children may become more and

more capable of manipulating phonemes whether or not they are alphabet-literate"

(Mann, 1986, p. 87).

These results conflict with Morais et. al.'s findings on Portuguese illiterates. Since Tzeng

& Chang’s Taiwanese logographic readers and Mann’s Japanese fourth graders have had

no alphabetic training, why were both groups able to perform well on phonemic

awareness tasks? There are two possible explanations. The first, suggested by Mann, is

akin to a "critical period" for the acquisition of orthography: "perhaps the ability to

manipulate phonemes tends to atrophy unless maintained by appropriate reading

experience" (Mann, 1986, p. 89). "Appropriate reading experience" need not be

alphabetic literacy, but must be some form of literacy. Taiwanese literates can do PA

tasks as long as they receive an adequate training session that enables them to understand

the task at hand. Japanese fourth graders have had enough reading experience to perform

analytical tasks that their first grade counterparts cannot ("it would seem that the age of

the child has an impact on the degree of phoneme awareness" (Mann, 1991, p. 58)).

The Portuguese illiterates, on the other hand, have had no such reading experience, which

explains their inability to perform phonemic awareness tasks at any age.

However, this “critical period” theory would not explain why the older Chinese and

Japanese literates in the Read and Mann studies performed poorly on the phonemic

awareness tasks, as they had clearly had “appropriate reading experience,” in the sense

that they learned to read at a normal age, an age during which phonemic awareness could

have developed.

A second explanation is that subjects who perform well on phonemic awareness tasks

have received a form of alphabetic instruction, though it may be indirect. Morais

suggests that the PA abilities of Japanese fourth graders who had no exposure to an

alphabet

can be understood by taking into account the way kana is taught. Japanese children learn kana by means of a matrix in which all the characters in a row share the same vowel and all the characters in a column share the same consonant, except the first column to the right that consist of isolated vowels. It is possible to obtain a good performance in the deletion task by referring to the matrix (Morais, 1991, p. 17).

He concludes, contra Mann, that PA does not develop with any reading experience, but

requires attention to segments. However, the segmentation instruction does not have to

be as explicit as learning an alphabetic writing system. This explains Mann's results with

Japanese children and may also explain the Tzeng and Chang with Chinese readers

illiterate in pinyin, if some aspect of language pedagogy includes, however subtle,

attention to the initial segments of a word. Fangquie! This could also explain why

phonemic awareness skills were found with younger readers of nonalphabetic writing

systems, but not their older counterparts (if the older subjects were taught kana and

characters through a different method of instruction - or at home - or if the older subjects

were far enough removed from their school-days instruction that their phonemic

awareness skills had atrophied).

However, the “subtle” phonemic awareness instruction idea still fails to account for good

performance on PA tasks by Portuguese illiterates (after an adequate training session).

Commenting on the improved performance of illiterates on a PA task (from 24% correct

responses on the first block of items to 69% on the last block), Morais says that "the

capacity necessary to analyze speech at the segmental level does not seem to atrophy with

age in the absence of reading instruction. There seems to be no critical period for

acquiring segmental awareness" (Morais, 1987, p. 135)

The seeming phonemic awareness of groups who have not had exposure to an alphabet

might also be attributed to secondary language activities (more in the next section).

2.2.4. Phonemic awareness in dyslexics


fan-qie?

Dyslexics are an interesting case to examine with regard to the relationship between

phonemic awareness and reading, since they have had the same exposure to print as

normal readers, yet fail to perform well on PA tasks. Though the studies cited in the

previous section seem to suggest a causal relationship between alphabetic experience and

ability to perform PA tasks, "dyslexics have had much experience with alphabetic

material, therefore, experience cannot be the critical factor" (Morais, 1987, p. 135).

Morais (1987) cites a number of studies that demonstrate the relative inability of

dyslexics to carry out PA tasks. In his own 1984 study, Morais found that dyslexics had

only a 14% correct response rate on a consonant deletion task, versus 71-95% correct for

younger normal readers. Savin (1972) observed that young dyslexics can't play Pig

Latin, a game which requires phoneme manipulation. Lecocq (1986), studying groups of

dyslexic and normal 8-9, 10-11, and 12-13 year-olds, found performance on consonant

deletion tasks was significantly worse for dyslexics, who scored between 51% - 78%

correct (vs. 80-100% correct for normal readers). In other words, dyslexics seem to lack

any consistent phonemic awareness.

Somewhat encouraging is the work of Fox and Routh (1983), which showed that after

much training 11-13 year old dyslexics were able to perform a PA task with 96%

accuracy. This is unlike the case of Chinese literates or Portuguese illiterates, in that

"training" here was not merely task repetition after a short and repetitive training session,

but rather years of instruction on phonemic awareness skills. Thus, while the Chinese

and Portuguese cases could be interpreted as evidence that PA develops without explicit

alphabetic instruction, the evidence from dyslexics shows that even with direct alphabetic

instruction, phonemic awareness may fail to develop.

2.2.5. Phonemic awareness in Children with Down Syndrome

Data from children with Down Syndrome are relevant to the discussion of the

relationship between phonemic awareness and reading because "if in some abnormal

group reading is acquired in the absence of ability to perform explicit segmental analysis

tasks, that would seem prima facie evidence that no necessary causal connection holds

between the two skills" (Cossu et. al., p. 130). Cossu looked at the PA skills of Children

with Down Syndrome (mean age 11.4) matched for reading ability with normal children

(mean age 7.3). On four PA tasks (phoneme segmentation (counting), phoneme deletion,

oral spelling, and phonemic synthesis (blending)) the normal children far outperformed

the children with Down Syndrome. Thus, two groups of children with the same level of

reading ability showed different levels of phonemic awareness.

Some might argue that the Down Syndrome subjects performed badly on the PA tasks

merely because they didn't understand what they were supposed to attend to in their

responses. To this, Cossu says that "it would... be tautological to argue that the children

with Down Syndrome merely failed to understand the task demands for the phonological

awareness test: with respect to conscious skills, failure to understand the nature of the

task is failure to be able to perform the task" (Cossu et. al., pp. 134). Since phonemic

awareness is conscious attention to the segmentation of words, the failure to understand

what is meant by "leaving off the first sound of a word" is the failure to be phonemically

aware. O’Connor (1992), et.al., citing their own research with children with Down

Syndrome, conclude that the poor phonemic awareness performance on the part of their

subjects is partially related to their inability to generalize from trained practice items to

test items.

Since children with Down Syndrome perform so much worse on PA tasks than children

they are matched on reading skills with, Cossu concludes that "it is neither the case that

lack of phonological awareness has prevented learning to read, not that learning to read

has developed phonological awareness" (Cossu et. al., p. 134). As with the data from

dyslexics, this data begins to break down presumed strong causal connections between

phonemic awareness and reading ability.

2.2.6. Summary & implications

Research on illiterates, literates with nonalphabetic orthographies, dyslexics and children

with Down Syndrome has interesting implications for phonemic awareness research.

Studies showing that illiterates and literates with nonalphabetic orthographies are unable

to conduct phonemic awareness tasks would seem to indicate that phonemic awareness

results from, and only from, alphabetic instruction. However, dyslexics are exposed to

alphabetic instruction and do not acquire phonemic awareness. Though it could be

argued that dyslexics are also poor readers (so the phonemic awareness/reading

connection holds), Children with Down Syndrome performed worse on phonemic

awareness tasks than their reading-matched counterparts.

Other studies showing that illiterates (with training) and literates with nonalphabetic

orthographies (and indirect exposure to phonemic awareness concepts through method of

language instruction) can perform well on phonemic awareness tasks imply that

phonemic awareness does not have a critical period, nor does it need to be explicitly

taught to be acquired (in keeping with whole language theorists).

This conflicting information can be reconciled with a modified version of Morais’

conclusions from his original study with Portuguese illiterates. Phonemic awareness is

not a developmental milestone; it does not necessarily develop, and it is not subject to a

critical period. It only develops in the context of certain phonemic exposure, though that

exposure may be through direct exposure to an alphabet, indirect exposure to an alphabet

through language pedagogy, or, as discussed in the next section, through secondary

language activities.

2.3. Phonemic awareness and secondary language activities

The studies cited above explore how primary language activity affects phonemic

awareness in special populations, be they readers of other orthographies, illiterate, or

differently abled. What role do secondary language activities play? Secondary language

activities are the games that people play with language as part of everyday life: poems,

songs, and wordplay. They differ from primary language activities (communication-


This is a very decent summary, but can you relate these results back to your hypothesis? This should be done for all summaries/sections.

based activities) in that they involve a particular attention to the structure of language that

primary language activities do not. Though a poet cannot write a haiku without counting

syllables, such counting does not occur in normal discourse. Experience with secondary

language activities may explain why it is that some illiterates can perform phonemic

awareness tasks, or that Chinese unfamiliar with pinyin could break a word up into

segments.

The most extreme view of the studies with readers of nonalphabetic orthographies (Read

et. al; Mann) and illiterates (Morais et. al.) is that the development of phonemic

awareness skills requires alphabetic experience. In addition to the criticisms already

raised, such a statement implies that no one who has not been exposed to an alphabet can

break a word into its component segments. A number of considerations lead us to

conclude that this is far too strong a position.

First, "phoneme awareness can sometimes precede the ability to read an alphabet "

(Mann, 1991, p. 56). Children often enter school able to perform well on PA tasks,

although they have not yet learned to read. How can this be so? Mann says, "factors

other than knowledge of the alphabet may contribute to the awareness of phonemes"

(Mann, 1991, p. 55). So, even without being "taught" the alphabet through reading with

parents or watching educational TV, a child may develop phonemic awareness. What

secondary language activities contribute to phonemic awareness?


Just an irrelevant comment: I think those are actually the primary activities and communication per se is just an interesting side effect…but that's just me.

Adams cites knowledge of nursery rhymes as an indicator of the most primitive level of

PA, and this is why: rhymes help children learn about spelling categories and develop

phonemic awareness, by learning to break down words into units smaller than the

syllable. In their own study, Bradley and Bryant (1991) found that "preschool

phonological skills play an important part in reading acquisition. rhyme scores...prove to

be reliable predictors of reading ability" (Bradley and Bryant, p. 40). When children

learn to rhyme, they are learning that there are units of words (rimes) that are bigger than

phonemes, but smaller than syllables. This is an intermediate step between syllabic

awareness and phonemic awareness. The role of rhyming games in the development of

phonemic awareness is furthermore a very “whole language” approach to the acquisition

of phonemic awareness, in that it is not explicit. Rhyming as a route to phonemic

awareness is extremely similar to the kana example cited in the previous section. A 3-

year-old American child and a school-age Japanese child might not have been exposed in

any direct way to an alphabet, and yet both may have acquired some phonemic awareness

skills. The 3-year-old has heard a nursery rhyme which groups rhyming words in a

regular fashion (hickory/dickory; dock/clock); the Japanese child has had repeated

exposure to rhyming kana arranged together in a grid (po, mo, do, so...). Both may look

for a way to organize the input; this is found by stripping off the first phoneme.

Secondary language activities may explain why Lundberg (1991) found that 9 out of 51

prereaders gave perfect performance on a segmentation task, even though the children

had participated in similar language activities in and outside the school. Granted, far

more prereaders failed than succeeded on the PA task, but in the absence of alphabetic

instruction why should even 9 students perform so well? Lundberg suggests that

"whereas most researchers now seem to agree that the relationship between phonological

awareness and reading is reciprocal in nature, the question of which affects the other

most and earliest is far from settled" (Lundberg, p. 47). If we adopt Adams' levels of

phonological awareness, we can see where children's secondary language activities play a

role in the development of their PA skill. Yet, at the same time, there does seem to be a

maturational component which cannot be denied: some tasks or secondary language

activities are simply too sophisticated for young children.

If nursery rhymes indicate the most primitive level of phonemic awareness, what comes

next? A number of secondary language activities might hone phonemic awareness skill

(or, rather, hone the analytical aspect of a skill which already exits). For instance,

children love tongue twisters, which require a sensitivity to the fact that all words in a

string begin with the same phoneme (for a child to "get" what makes "Peter Piper picked

a peck of pickled peppers" a tongue twister, he or she must be able to separate/identify

[p]). Language games can tap into various levels of phonemic awareness. In Pig Latin,

the child need only segment and transpose the first onset in a word: latin > atinlay. In

"Op," the child has to be able to segment the onset of every syllable (not just the initial

syllable) away from the rime: segment > sopegmopent. In the "name game," the child

must be able to manipulate both the onset and the rime of the input in constructing the

output: Ken > ken ken bo ben, banana fana fo fen, me my mo men, KEN! Each of these

activities support the idea that "phoneme awareness is facilitated by some other

secondary language experience" (Mann, 1986, p. 88).

Given that secondary language experience can facilitate phonemic awareness, the

seemingly anomalous results of illiterates or non-alphabetic literates on PA tasks can be

explained. Perhaps those subjects did not have explicit instruction in an alphabet, but did

participate in secondary language activities which foster phonemic awareness. Mann

mentions a number of language games in cultures lacking an alphabetic orthography. In

Luganda (Kilbride & Kiblbride, 1974)), a game requires that each syllable be followed by

"z" and the previous vowel: omusajja > omuzusazajjaza. In a Bedouin Hijaze Arabic

game (McCarthy, 1981) single consonants can be metathesized: kaatab > bataak; taakab

> taabak. In one Mandarin game(Yip, 1982), the syllable is split and infixed: ma >

mayka. Though these games occur in languages lacking alphabetic orthographies, the

game-players have certainly developed some level of phonemic awareness.

In this and the previous section, the connection between phonemic awareness and reading

ability has been discussed. Most of the research in this area has been conducted on

populations with little or no exposure to an alphabet (preliterate children, illiterates,

literates with nonalphabetic orthographies) or on populations for whom phonemic

awareness tasks present a special challenge (dyslexics, Children with Down Syndrome).

Before conducting phonemic awareness studies on adults who have had significant


I thought they could be completely reordered.

exposure to an alphabet, it is essential to explore the impact alphabetic literacy might

have on such tasks.

2.4. Special considerations: the question of orthographic interference

The previous sections in this chapter contained an overview of past research on phonemic

awareness. As discussed in the previous sections, most of the work in the field has been

done with preliterate children, illiterates, or literates in nonalphabetic orthographies:

those with little or no experience with alphabets. However, there is a wide variety of

evidence that knowledge of orthography, or of a particular orthography, can affect

performance on various phonological tasks. Since the subjects studied in this project

were all literate adults, we must examine the role that orthographic knowledge might play

in a phonemic awareness task.

The work discussed earlier in this chapter makes it clear that literacy (specifically,

alphabetic literacy) affects performance on various phonological tasks. This relationship

manifests itself in the ability to perform phoneme manipulation tasks, and in the encoding

of grapheme-phoneme relationships. But, just what is the nature of this relationship?

How might it affect subjects’ performance on phonemic awareness tasks?

One possibility is that alphabetic literacy might play a role in auditory lexical access.

Since phonemic awareness tasks require a subject to process an auditory stimulus, this

could be problematic.


O.k., but you need to say something about how secondary tasks are relevant to your hypothesis.

2.4.1. The role of orthography in phonological access

In fact, there is evidence that orthography interferes in auditory tasks. Surprisingly,

literacy can, in a sense, impede performance. There is a positive correlation between

phonemic awareness and reading ability in studies with children, indicating that

phonemic awareness helps children break the alphabetic code, and go on to become better

readers. Might it be the case that the best adult readers - those most intimate with the

orthography of their language - are hindered by their spelling ability in phonological

tasks? Two studies which have addressed this issue are discussed below.

Tanenhaus, Flanigan & Seidenburg (1980) presented subjects with a series of auditory

word pairs, and asked subjects to ascertain whether or not the pairs rhymed. Some of the

rhyming pairs were orthographically similar (like TURN/BURN) and some were

orthographically distinct (like TURN/LEARN). The main finding of the study was that

orthographically distinct pairs of words took much longer to identify as rhymes than pairs

that were spelled alike. Thus, at some point between the time when subjects are

presented with auditory stimuli and when subjects depress a response key, orthography

interferes.

A second study showing orthographic interference in a phonological task was Taft &

Hambly's 1985 syllable matching study. Subjects were presented with pairs of auditory

stimuli - a syllable and a word - and asked to determine whether the syllable was

contained in the word. Subjects performed particularly poorly on pairs such as

ANK/ANXIOUS ([æk]/[ækes]). These were identified by Taft & Hambly as those

pairs where orthographic interference was likely. Their argument is this: presumably,

though [ækRes] is spelled a-n-x..., [æk] is "spelled"7 a-n-k. Due to an orthographic

mismatch (“x” vs. “k”), subjects would give such items a "no" response, even though, on

the basis of phonology, a "yes" response was expected.

How is the orthographic interference demonstrated in these tasks to be interpreted? As

Taft and Hambly point out, "the interpretation that one favors ultimately depends on how

dominant a role one wishes to ascribe to orthography in spoken word processing" (T&H,

p. 331). This is best illustrated using a lexical access model, such as the simplified

sketch of the Forster model of lexical access (Forster 1976;1990), given below:8

<visual stimulus> <auditory stimulus>

orthographic access code phonological access code

MASTER LEXICONmaster lexicon entry

(orthographic information/phonological information)

According to the strictest interpretation of the Forster model, orthography plays a

minimal role in spoken word processing. Given an auditory stimulus, a purely

phonological code is used in lexical access. Only after access has taken place is

orthographic information about that word (stored in the Master Lexicon entry) available.

7 That is, if subjects are constructing an orthographic representation of /æk/ the one they would construct is a-n-k.

8 Note that Forster's model also includes a semantic access code, which has been omitted here for the sake of simplicity.


Does it have a name?

An alternative to the Forster model would ascribe a dominant role to orthography in

spoken word processing. Contra the Forster model, such a model of lexical access would

look something like this:

<auditory stimulus>

orthographic access code phonological access code

MASTER LEXICONmaster lexicon entry

with both orthographic and phonological codes involved in the access of an auditory

target. A third alternative lies somewhere in between these two extremes, with

orthographic information neither ignored during auditory word processing nor given the

same importance as phonological information.

Zecker et. al. (1986) lay out these possibilities nicely. In their work, they argue that

phonological and orthographic codes are integrated in the left hemisphere of the brain

(with this finding based on the results of a rhyming judgment task, where they found a

significant interaction between ear of presentation and orthographic similarity of stimulus

items9). Zecker et. al. posit three alternatives - granting various dominance to the role of

orthography in auditory word recognition - to "the relationship between the access of

9 It took subjects considerably longer to judge that orthographically dissimilar pairs like "dirt-hurt" rhymed than orthographically similar pairs like "glue-clue." This is the same finding as that of Tanenhaus, Flanigan, & Seidenberg, cited earlier. However, Zecker et. al. additionally found that this effect was significantly greater when stimulus items were presented in the right ear (i.e. the left hemisphere) than the left ear. They conclude from this that orthographic and phonological information are integrated in the left hemisphere (hence the large orthographic interference).

sound-based codes in visual word recognition and spelling-based codes in auditory word

recognition." We will explore these possibilities in turn, in hopes of discovering what

effect literacy will have on the tasks in the next section.

Zecker et. al. point out that "one possibility is that code integration [that is, orthographic

interference in tasks with auditory stimuli] results from the child learning spelling-sound

mapping rules during beginning reading. Spelling effects in auditory word recognition

are the result of spelling-sound mappings becoming automatized" (Zecker et. al., brackets

mine). In this case, what appears on the surface to be orthographic interference during

access is really the result of "automatized" comparisons of post-access activated spellings

with their pronunciations. To make this more concrete, consider the two tasks discussed

above. In the rhyming recognition task, the stimuli (LEARN/TURN; TURN/BURN) are

accessed via a purely phonological code, but once the words are accessed, their Master

Lexicon entries, orthographic representations and all, are activated. A post-access check

ascertains that l-e-a-r-n and t-u-r-n are not spelled the same, even though "automatized"

sound spelling rules (which would say something like, e-a-r-n sounds like [ern], u-r-n

sounds like [ern]) predict a match. This contradictory information results in a longer

reaction time. The same is true in the ANK/ANXIOUS case. Once ANXIOUS is

accessed, its spelling is available and will thus cause interference in the form of a

mismatch when compared with the speech signal ANK.

Zecker et. al. raise the "second possibility ... that there are sound-spelling rules which are

similar to spelling-sound rules. These rules may be learned by the child in the course of

learning to spell." So, just as a child learning to read learns a rule that the letter 's' sounds

like /s/, that same child, in learning to spell, learns that "long i" (/ay/) is spelled 'i...e.'

This interpretation of orthographic interference as "orthographic recoding" (application of

on-line sound-to-spelling conversion rules) is analogous to the "phonological recoding"

(see Taft, 1991 and others) discussed in the literature on written word recognition. It is a

dual-route access model, whereby both phonological and orthographic codes are used in

auditory word recognition.

However, it is not as clear why an orthographic code might be an automatic part of

spoken word recognition as it is that a phonological code might be an automatic part of

written word recognition. Phonological recoding is hotly debated, even though it has

support in the form of intuitions (the "voice in the head" people hear when they read),

development (children learn to speak before they learn to spell, making phonology the

primary form of linguistic representation) and history (spoken languages existed long

before writing systems were developed for them). In the absence of such support for

orthographic recoding, why should the possibility even be entertained?

Dupoux & Mehler (1992), in their analysis of French phoneme detection tasks, provide

arguments that "not only is an orthographic code available when listening to speech....but

this code is available on-line" (p. 65). They attribute differences in performance on

syllable monitoring tasks by literates and illiterates to the fact that an on-line

orthographic code, which results in orthographic interference among literates, is not

available to the illiterates. Although Dupoux & Mehler are not talking about on-line

orthographic recoding in the sense of sound-spelling conversion rules (in fact, the

conclusions they draw rely on the subjects' awareness of segments), they do not want to

“ tern/bern”

orthographic recoding phonological codingX-u-r-n / X-u-r-n X-ern/X-ern

draw any conclusions about precisely what is contained in the orthographic code: "we do

not have the data to ascertain that the relevant code is really a visual representation of the

letters of the characters, instead of the relevant phonological level that the orthography

captures" (Dupoux & Mehler, p.72). In the tasks that they analyze, the "relevant

phonological level that the orthography captures” is the level of segment vs. syllable.10 It

could well be that the "relevant phonological level" in a different task is the level of

phoneme-to-grapheme conversion rules. Again, a consideration of the previously

discussed tasks serves to make this more concrete. If it is the case that orthographic

recoding happens on-line, this is what happens with the rhyming task:

TURN/BURN case:

In the case where two words are pronounced alike, the sound-spelling conversion rules

will yield the same spelling for both words. If the words are in fact spelled alike, this will

not be a problem once the words are accessed. On the other hand, consider the case in

which two words pronounced alike are spelled differently:

TURN/LEARN case:

10 Dupoux et. al. examine the results from syllable monitoring tasks. They cite orthographic interference as the reason that subjects will sometimes say (erroneously) that the syllable "pal" is contained in "palace." Though the two words are mismatched on syllabic grounds (the first syllable of "palace" is "pa"), on orthographic grounds (that is, at the level of the segment), the two stimuli are matched, in that they both consist of the sequence p-a-l.

“tern/lern”

orthographic recoding phonological codingX-u-r-n / X-u-r-n X-ern/X-ern

OR

Again, since the words are pronounced alike, orthographic recoding would spell them in

the same way . The outputs of two possible spelling-sound conversion rules are listed

above. No matter which rule is chosen, such recoding would cause interference (since

*lurn and *tearn would not be listed in the lexicon).

Thus, on-line orthographic recoding is a second possible explanation for orthographic

interference effects in tasks with auditory stimuli.

In addition to the two possible explanations for orthographic interference listed above,

Zecker et. al. propose a third possibility for the role of orthography in auditory word

recognition, which lies somewhere in between the dominant and minimal roles discussed

thus far: "the child learns to integrate spelling and sound information as a learning

heuristic." Thus, the access route for auditory words is not purely phonological (latter

tapping into orthographic information), nor orthographic and phonological in parallel, but

would rather involve some integrated code. This account is favored by Taft and Hambly,

who conclude that "the phonological task is performed in a phonological code, though

this code is influenced by orthography" (T&H). Lexical access taps into what Taft and

Hambly call "orthographically influenced phonological representations." These might

include something like the “spelling pronunciations” that Lorenson (1993) found:

subjects have trouble classifying [izlænd] (for island) and [kolonel] (for colonel) as

nonwords, apparently because these pronunciations warrant a pseudo-lexical entry (an

"orthographically influenced phonological representation”) in the brain.

So, orthographic knowledge does interfere with performance on phonological tasks, be it

through phonologically accessed orthographic representations, orthographic recoding, or

orthographically influenced phonological representations. This must be taken into

consideration in the six experiments in the next chapter, which are designed to assess the

connection between phonemic awareness and reading ability in literate adults. The tasks

in these experiments are based on tasks used in previous phonemic awareness studies,

most of which involve children. In each of the experiments with children, task

performance is gauged by subject error rate on phonemic awareness tasks. Since adults

have greater cognitive capabilities than children, and since moreover they have greater

linguistic capabilities than children, the tasks used in experiments with children are not

challenging enough to adults to yield any interesting results. For instance, all literate

adults can, with nearly 100% accuracy “count” the number of sounds in a word in which

there is a one-to-one correspondence between the number of phonemes and the number

of graphemes; adults are helped in this task type by their orthographic knowledge.

However, the orthographic knowledge that adults possess might be enough of an

impediment that it can be used against them, e.g. by generating higher error rates on

phonemic awareness tasks. The pilot task described below tested this assumption.

2.4.2. Pilot: Delete Segment Task

A task used in many phonemic awareness studies with children is the Delete Segment

Task (see Bradley and Bryant, 1983, among others). In this task, children are asked to

delete the initial phoneme in a word. A pilot experiment was conducted to determine if a

segment deletion task would suggest that adults possess differing levels of phonemic

awareness. The purpose of the experiment was to alter the original methodology

minimally, but enough to generate errors among the adult subjects.

METHOD

Subjects

Subjects were thirteen University of Arizona undergraduates, all of whom were native

speakers of English.

Tasks and Procedure

In segment deletion tests with children, the instructions often are something like, “Listen

to the word task. If you take away the /t/ sound, what word is left?” (Stanovich et. al.,

1984; Cunningham, 1990) and the stimuli are such that when the first sound is stripped

off, a real word of English remains (for example, pink, told, man ink, old, an). The

stimuli are words which begin with a consonant-vowel sequence, not a cluster. Literate

adults find this task extremely easy, especially since the real-word status of the correct

response serves as a “check” to their answers. It was determined that replicating the

Stanovich/Cunningham segment deletion task with adults would fail to elicit enough

errors to be at all illuminating.

However, it was important to remain faithful to the original methodology, since the

experiments in this study attempt to draw the same kinds of conclusions about phonemic

awareness and reading as experiments with children. The least drastic means of adapting

the experiment to adults was to retain the original task and procedure while replacing the

stimuli with much more challenging items. The instruction to subjects was, “I’m going to

give you a word, and I want you to tell me what that word would sound like if the first

sound were taken off.” They then heard the task modeled on ten practice items, which

were followed by thirty test items. Subjects heard instructions through a set of

headphones and spoke responses into a hand-held microphone.

The stimuli in the Cunningham and Stanovich experiments were monosyllabic words

beginning with a CV sequence which were still words of English when the first

consonant was deleted. In this experiment, the stimuli were bisyllabic words beginning

with a variety of sequences (more below) which are nonwords when the first consonant is

deleted.

Based on the studies on orthographic interference and phonological access cited in the

previous section, it was determined that one way to make the stimuli more difficult was

to include stimuli which lack a one-to-one relationship between the phonemes and

graphemes of their initial segment (the segment to be deleted). Because aural stimuli

would call up “orthographically influenced phonological representations,” orthography

could be used as a tool to make stimuli more challenging.

Each stimulus word fell into one of the following four categories:

1. a single phoneme spelled with a single consonant, like baby [bebi] (a one-

to-one correspondence of phonemes and graphemes)

2. a single phoneme spelled with a digraph, like thesis [iss] (a one-to-two

correspondence of phonemes and graphemes)

3. a consonant cluster, spelled with a single grapheme, like music [myuzk]

(a two-to-one correspondence of phonemes and graphemes)

4. a consonant cluster, spelled with more than one grapheme, like climax

[klymæks] (a two-to-two correspondence of phonemes and graphemes)

It should be the easiest for subjects to delete an initial segment from a stimulus in

category (1), since doing so does not require extraction of a phoneme from a cluster or

involve a mismatch of phonological and orthographic representations. Conditions (2) and

(3) should present subjects with some difficulty if they are using orthographic

representations in their task strategy (that is, they may give [hiss] as a response to thesis


I'm not sure I follow this characterization. Do you have examples in this category other than the diphthong written with <u>?

in the segment deletion task, or [uzk] as a response to music). Finally, conditions (3)

and (4) should be difficult because they begin with clusters, so segment deletion requires

subjects to extract the initial segment from the rest of the onset.

Results

Responses were considered correct if subjects deleted the first (and only the first)

phoneme in a word. The test items and correct responses are given in the table below:


You should include a column for each item's coding in terms of what you have above.

Stimulus Stimulus (IPA) Correct Response

theory iri Iri

beauty byui Yuri

scarcely skersli kersli

pupil pyupl yupl

humor hyumr yumr

parish per er

champagne æmpen æmpen

tiny tyni yni

storage stord tord

colleague klig lig

thermal rml rml

frantic fræntk ræntk

sentry sentri entri

shaky eki eki

quarter kwrtr wrtr

climax klymæks lymæks

gentile dntyl ntyl

fifty ffti fti

puny pyuni yuni

chimney tmni mni

penny pni ni

cubic kyubk yubk

captive kæptv æptv

feudal fyudl yudl

music myuzk yuzk

shadow ædo Ædo

pony poni Oni

thesis iss iss

temper tmpr mpr

baby bebi Ebi


These are actually a slightly different case for [yu]. That is, sometimes there is no separate letter, <music>, and sometimes there is, <feudal>. Do you expect these to behave the same or differently?


Actually, how ARE you coding affricates? As a single consonant or two?


Also an interesting case, is this REALLY [kw]? I think some folks have [kortr] or something like that.


In some dialects, this is [hyumr] and in others, it's [yumr]. Also, dialects of the first sort are sometimes described as having a voiceless palatal glide, in which case, there is no consonant cluster.

Subjects made the fewest errors on words beginning with, and spelled with, a single

consonant. Performance on the other three conditions was compared to that condition, as

shown in the table below:

Condition Example T-test comparison Significance(1) one-to-one baby --- ---(2) one-to-two thesis 2.23 .05 > p > .01(3) two-to-one music 6.87 p < .001(4) two-to-two climax 10.94 p < .001

As predicted, conditions (2)-(4) were all significantly more difficult than condition (1).

However, the difference in subjects’ performance on conditions and (1) and (2) was only mildly

significant, whereas the differences in performance between both (1) and (3) and (1) and (4)

were strongly signifcant. Since (3) and (4) are the conditions in which subjects are asked to

extract an initial segment from a cluster, it may be concluded that the cluster condition requires a

more sophisticated level of phonemic awareness than extraction of an onset from its rime (as

required in condition (1)). This finding is consistent with Adams’ levels of phonological

awareness, in that onset/rime knowledge is at a lower level of phonological awareness than

segment manipulation. Performance on condition (2) vs. (1) indicates mild orthographic

interference in this phonological task. However, subjects found it harder to delete a segment that

was part of a cluster (regardless of how it was spelled) than a segment which was spelled like a

cluster.


This should come from a comparison of the means, not from a comparison of p values.


All of these are significant and you can't really compare across significance levels using p. (If you do want to make this comparison, then you need to talk about the size of the effect. Ugh!)


p < .05


T-tests are nice, but you need to do the standard stats, no? That is, I'm thinking a big anova done with subjects as a random factor and then with items as a random factor. THEN you do pairwise comparisons (effectively t-tests). So two things here. First, report the experiment in a more orthodox form, not a big deal really. And second, do the big anovas first (unlikely to matter but necessary anyway). You should also give a chart with means for each condition.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this study. First, orthography does play a

part in phonological tasks (involving auditory stimuli), but orthographic interference

(orthographic difficulty) takes a back seat to phonological difficulty. The second

conclusion is more practical: if phonemic awareness tasks based on experiments with

preliterate children are to be made more difficult for literate adults by using different

stimuli, stimuli which are chosen on the basis of a difficult phonological pattern will

generate more errors than stimuli chosen because of a confusing

phonological/orthographic mismatch.

2.5. Summary

At the beginning of this chapter, a number of questions about the connection between

phonemic awareness and reading ability were raised:

What is the exact nature of the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability? Is one a prerequisite for the other, or do the two develop simultaneously?

Are there levels of phonemic awareness, or is it a developmental on/off switch, in that it is either present or absent?

Is phonemic awareness teachable? Why do some people develop phonemic awareness, and others not? Other than explicit instruction in an alphabetic orthography, what types of

activities foster phonemic awareness? How might knowledge of a specific orthography affect a subject’s ability to

perform a test of phonemic awareness?

The research cited in this chapter leads us to the following view of phonemic awareness:


Good questions, but how do they relate to your hypothesis/question?


Actually, I'm not remembering that you outlined the chapter at its beginning or made reference to the pilot you cite. If not, you need to do that. Also, I think, though there's some cleanup, the pilot is a nice centerpiece for the chapter and the prose should be refocused around it. Perhaps some of the prose needs to move to chapter 1? There does seem to be a little redundancy between the prose there and the prose here too.


Not just more errors, but errors that display a sensible pattern and that correspond at least partially to the pattern with kids?


"in phonemic awareness tasks involving adults"?

The relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability is strong; the two

measures are highly correlated in studies with preliterate children and young readers. The

question has arisen as to whether phonological awareness fosters reading ability or

whether reading experience breeds phonemic awareness. Many researchers who work on

emergent literacy in children have viewed the PA/reading relationship as causal in the

sense that phonemic awareness tasks can “predict” later success or failure in reading; the

children who are most phonemically aware become the best readers. However, this has

been criticized as a "catch-22" claim, in that children who perform well on PA tasks are

perhaps those who have already had some reading-related experience, however indirect it

might be.

Some argue that phonological awareness is a prerequisite for learning to read an

alphabet. This is difficult to reconcile with the findings that most illiterates and readers

of non-alphabetic orthographies lack phonemic awareness. Research with these

populations has shown that phonemic awareness is a consequence of reading (alphabetic)

experience; it does not develop in a vacuum. If phonemic awareness is a prerequisite for

reading an alphabet, and yet does not exist in many who lack alphabetic experience, how

does it develop?

Morais (1987) argues the point that phonemic awareness develops only from alphabetic

literacy:

It is important, in my view, to distinguish between the ability of segmental analysis and the cognitive capacity that underlies this ability ... the

alphabetic system of writing is a cultural product, used by only a minority of the more recent humans. And alphabetic literacy is probably the only function of segmental awareness. When, then, should people be born with a specific capacity for segmental awareness that would be only waiting for a particular experience to develop? (Morais, 1987, p. 134)

Morais’ theory has support in research on populations who do not develop phonemic

awareness. Phonemic awareness fails to develop in certain people either because they

(1) exhibit a neurological condition which prevents certain connections from being made

(e.g., dyslexia) or, more commonly, because they (2) lack sufficient alphabetic

experience. People falling into the latter category may be school-age children who lack a

sufficiently rich reading background upon entering school (and thus have trouble

catching up when reading instruction begins), illiterates (who never receive reading

instruction), or literates in nonalphabetic orthographies (because they, too, lack explicit

instruct instruction or experience with an alphabetic orthography).

The theory the phonemic awareness is a consequence of alphabetic reading (rather than a

prerequisite) also has problems, however. Some prereaders, illiterates, and readers of

syllabaries and logographies - populations who have had no direct experience with

alphabetic literacy - do exhibit varying degrees of success on phonemic awareness tasks.

This is because explicit instruction in an alphabetic orthography is not the only route to

phonemic awareness, as other types of activities foster phonemic awareness.. Secondary

language activities include language games, poetry, kana charts, etc. and explain why

preliterate children exhibit different levels of phonemic awareness before they have

begun phonics instruction, and why some literates in nonalphabetic orthographies are

able to perform phonemic awareness tasks. Any of these experiences might develop

phonemic awareness.

So, rather than measuring past reading experience or future reading ability in any

concrete way, phonemic awareness tasks, at their core, measure the ability to abstract

and manipulate phonemes. The only logical connection between PA and reading ability is

the following: phonemic awareness and reading ability are in a symbiotic relationship, in

which the two skills develop in tandem. All successful alphabetic readers exhibit a

certain degree of phonemic awareness, and those children who exhibit the most

sophisticated phonemic awareness will go on to be the best readers.

Phonemic awareness does appear to be teachable through phonemic awareness training,

though it is most effective when combined with phonics instruction. The combination of

fact-based learning (i.e., graphophonic rules about sound-symbol correspondences)

combined with skill-based learning (i.e., phonemic awareness skills, such as

segmentation and blending), has proved more effective than either on its own (or

nothing). This is encapsulated in the phonological linkage hypothesis, which states that

the most effective form of reading instruction aids children in forming explicit links

between their phonemic awareness skills and their reading-based skills; explicit

instruction in the symbiotic nature of the relationship.


Still not clear to me what this is.

As phonemic awareness develops (though primary or secondary language activities),

people demonstrate different levels of phonemic awareness, from the most basic

(knowledge of nursery rhymes) to the most sophisticated (the ability to manipulate

phonemes on command, by deleting or substituting a phoneme in a word). Phonemic

awareness is not a developmental on/off switch, and appears to require some type of

alphabetic experience to grow and develop to its fullest extent (which explains why most

illiterates and literates in nonalphabetic orthographies cannot perform phonemic

awareness tasks).

Adult phonemic awareness is difficult to assess since adults, by virtue of their years of

experience with an alphabetic orthography, are conflated at the highest levels of

phonemic awareness. Moreover, it is clear that literate adults may experience

phonological interference in performing phonemic awareness tasks, because of

orthographically influenced phonological representations or orthographic recoding of

phonologically processed material. Fortunately, the results of a pilot task indicate that

orthographic complexity of a word is less important in processing than the phonological

complexity of a word when performing phonological tasks, so adults’ phonological and

phonemic awareness can be tested in isolation.

The experiments described in the next chapter did just that.


This chapter feels a bit redundant, superfluous. The pilot is nice, and that section should be expanded, but the other stuff feels like it really belongs in ch.1 On the other hand, ch.1 is already probably too long. The problem there is that there's a lot of stuff about phonemic awareness that's really much more appropriate for education folks, rather than linguists. Perhaps, that should be shortened (and sharpened)?

3.0. The Experiments

3.1. Overview

The experiments discussed in this chapter were designed to test the phonemic awareness

skills of literate adults, and the relationship of those skills to reading ability. Six tests of

phonological awareness were conducted in all. The six experiments are related, but

distinct, and all have varying degrees of difficulty. Performance on each test of

phonemic awareness was compared to performance on a test of reading ability.

In the experiments discussed below, the phonological awareness of subjects is assessed

by having them perform three different phonological awareness tasks (deletion,

substitution, and permutation of phonological units) on two different phonological units

(syllables and segments), resulting in six experiments total (3x2=6). The table below

illustrates this design:

Segment-based tasks Syllable-based tasksDeletion Delete Segment Task (1) Delete Syllable Task (2)Substitution Substitute Segment Task (3) Substitute Syllable Task (4)Permutation Reverse Segment Task (5) Reverse Syllable Task (6)

The numbers in parentheses refer to the experiment numbers.

As the table illustrates, for each phonological manipulation (operation) that subjects were

asked to perform, a pair of sister experiments was constructed: one in which syllables are


Done to here.

the unit of manipulation, and one in which segments are the unit of manipulation. This

design allows for three distinct analyses of the data:

1. An analysis of the relationship between subjects’ reading ability and their performance on the phonological awareness tasks outlined above,

2. A comparison of subjects’ performance on sister experiments, that is, the two experiments in which subjects are asked to perform the same type of operation on two different linguistic units (segments and syllables), and

3. An analysis of subjects’ performance on the three different types of manipulations of the same phonological unit

This three-part analysis will explore several aspects of phonemic awareness in literate

adults. Analysis (1) above will test for a relationship between phonemic awareness and

reading ability, while (2) and (3) will test whether there are differing levels of phonemic

and phonological awareness in literate adults. The predictions are as follows: With

regard to (1), it is expected, following the vast body of research done on children’s

phonemic awareness and reading ability, that there will be a correlation between subjects’

performance on reading and phonemic awareness tests. However, since all literate adults

exhibit some level of phonemic awareness, and since the ability to manipulate syllables is

present before the ability to manipulate phonemes and prior to reading experience (as shown in

preliterate children and illiterates), it is predicted that reading ability will correlate with performance on the

three phonemic awareness tests (the segment-based tasks) and not the remaining phonological awareness

tests (the syllable-based tasks). This is illustrated below:


Actually you haven't said yet in this chapter that you will do this and how you'll do it.

Segment-based tasks Syllable-based tasks

Deletion Delete Segment Task (1) Delete Syllable Task (2)

Substitution Substitute Segment Task (3) Substitute Syllable Task (4)

Permutation Reverse Segment Task (5) Reverse Syllable Task (6)

Prediction: As (1), (3), & (5) tap into phonemic awareness, they will be correlated with reading ability

Prediction: As (2), (4), & (6) tap into lower-level phonological awareness only, they will not be correlated with reading ability

Because adults have achieved a baseline level of phonological awareness, their ability to

manipulate syllables is unrelated to their reading ability (since all adults are able to manipulate

syllables with relative ease). This brings us to the second set of predictions.

Because syllables are accessible phonological units to illiterates and preliterates, it is assumed

(Adams, 1990, and many others) that syllabic awareness is a precursor to phonemic awareness.

Therefore, it is expected that when the comparisons of the sister experiments discussed in (2)

above are carried out, it will be found that subjects perform significantly better on the syllabic-

based tasks than the segment-based tasks for each operation. This is illustrated below:

Performance on Syllable-based tasks > Performance on Segment-based tasks

Deletion Delete Syllable Task (2) > Delete Segment Task (1)

Substitution Substitute Syllable Task (4) > Substitute Segment Task (3)

Permutation Reverse Syllable Task (6) > Reverse Segment Task (5)


Or they will be, but less so than the segmental tasks?

Finally, it is predicted that when performances on different types of manipulations are

compared, it will be shown that adults, like children, perform best on deletion tasks and

worst on permutation tasks (Adams, 1990). This prediction, based upon findings with

children, is an expected fall-out from the experimental design, but is not central to the

thesis here. It will be touched upon the in discussion of all six experiments.

The tasks in the experiments below are all based on previous studies. A question that

arises in these types of studies is the degree to which the experimental design tests true

natural language ability, versus quirky task-oriented skills. After all, the results of such a

study are only interesting insofar as they reveal something about a subject’s natural

language ability. Why, then, have researchers in phonemic and phonological awareness

assumed that the seemingly unnatural feats subjects are asked to perform in an

experimental setting somehow reveal their linguistic competence? English speakers

don’t reverse segments in their everyday speech, and segment reversal is not employed in

English morphology. How, then, can we judge a subject’s phonemic awareness ability

by performance on an arguably unnatural task? Cross-linguistic evidence shows that

such tasks are not necessarily unnatural.

The tasks in phonemic awareness experiments usually take the form of invented language

games (invented by linguists, educators, psychologists, and speech pathologists for

training and diagnostic purposes), but naturally occurring language games (invented by


This is definitely something that should be dealt with in the previous chapters, and I'm thinking that you've actually already touched on this. So back to the leaner and meaner view of chapter 1 & 2. They're currently about 100pp, right? I'm thinking that, except for the discussion of the pilot, that even 50pp is too long for that review. Is there a way to keep the references, but i) cut back on repetition, ii) focus more on the linguistic issues, rather than the education issues, and iii) focus less on issues that don't bear on your hypothesis?


Shouldn't this already be answered in the previous chapters?

speakers for no greater reason than language play) take the same forms. Anderson (1992)

argues that language games may tell us more about linguistic abilities than naturally

occurring morphology:

Some [morphological] rule types are unattested not because they are beyond the bounds of human linguistic capacity, but rather because there is not coherent sequence of possible historical change that would give rise...In the phenomenon of ‘secret languages’ or ‘language games’ [there are] a wide range of process types which are not found in natural languages. Since they are not constrained by the limits on historical change, they are freer to exploit the limits of human linguistic capacities. (Anderson, 1992, p.63).

Anderson’s point is that “natural” is not synonymous with “broadly occurring”; due to

historical change or other factors, perfectly “natural” types of syllable and phoneme

manipulations may become rare. There are certainly parallels with the phonemic

inventory of a language; though [x] is a perfectly natural sound, it is not present in

modern-day English. Historical change assures that a given sound or phonological

process may be present in one language but absent in another.

Each of the “invented” tasks in the experimental design laid out above occurs in some

form in a naturally occurring language game. A version of segment deletion occurs in

that old standby, Pig Latin, in which the player has to delete (extract) the initial segment

and move it to the end of the word (game: [gem] [emge]). A similar game in Cuna, a

Chíbchan language of Panama, invokes syllable deletion: the first syllable of a word is

stripped off and then moved to the end of the word ([uwaya] [wayau]) (Bagemihl,

1989). Phoneme substitution can be seen in a Luganda game, in which each syllable

beginning with a consonant is reduplicated, with [z] in that consonant’s place ([omusajja]

[o-mu-zu-sa-za-jja-za]) (Kilbride & Kilbride, 1972). Syllable substitution is attested

in an informal language game played by my Swarthmore College peers, in which words

ending in -ter had their final syllable supplanted by [tri]: water: [war] [watri],

bitter: [br] [btri]. Substitution games are further attested in examples of

children’s spontaneous language play. Two examples that illustrate this are deanut dutter

dandwich (“peanut butter sandwich”) as segment substitution (Kleeck & Bryant, 1984)

and Mommy, is it an a-dult or a nuh-dult? as syllable substitution (Gleitman, Gleitman, &

Shipley, 1972). Even reversal tasks, which are less likely to occur as morphological

processes, make their way into language games. Bagemihl cites Zande, a

Niger-Congo/Adamawa-Ubangian language of Zaire, as an example of a language with a

syllable reversing language game ([tikpo] [kpoti]), and Chasu as an example of a

language with segment reversing games ([sano] [naso]). So, the tasks in Experiments

One through Six below are attested in natural language processes; the operations which

subjects are asked to perform all are found in naturally occurring language games.

The fact that even the most difficult tasks in the experiments below are attested in natural

language games should not be interpreted to mean that all human language speakers

possess the phonemic awareness necessary to play the games. On the contrary:

It appears that an alphabetic writing system may be a prerequisite for a segment reversal ludling [language game] to appear in a language...however, this is not a sufficient criterion, since many languages with alphabetic systems have only syllable reversing ludlings. Moreover, in languages with segment reversing ludlings, the reversal is clearly not based on the orthographic representations, as the English examples...illustrate....It seems that the presence of an alphabetic writing system is necessary for the establishment of some metalinguistic awareness of the notion of 'segment'; beyond this, however, the phonological system takes over as the primary basis for reversal. (Bagemihl, 1989, p. 485)

So, citing language games to justify task naturalness in no way implies that phonemic

awareness is an innate ability; it only confirms that the abilities to be tested in these

experiments are within the realm of human linguistic capacity. After all, not everyone

has a talent for Pig Latin!

The six experiments in this section have the advantage of clinical control; the task

instructions, task familiarity, learning period, and stimulus pattern are the same in each.

Because of this control, the data from different tasks can be compared with each other

and to the parallel measure of reading ability without concern that the results are

confounded by some task-specific factor.11

3.2. Deletion Experiments

3.2.1. Experiment One: Delete Segment Task

Experiment One is the Delete Segment Task. The experiment has two parts: an oral test

of phonemic awareness and a written task that measures reading ability.

The purpose of the experiment is two-fold. In and of itself, it is designed to test whether

adults exhibit the same connection between phonemic awareness and reading as children.

11 ? Still, as Mann suggests, it would be intriguing to study data from naturally occurring language games: “One would like to see research that investigates the phoneme awareness of children and adults who speak such secret languages [who play language games]. It remains to be seen whether these speakers will achieve high levels of performance on the same materials used in previous research on phoneme awareness.” (Mann, 1991, p. 61)


This is ambiguous, right? Do you mean that anyone can learn to play Pig Latin?

In comparison with its sister test, the Delete Syllable Task, it is designed to test whether

adults exhibit different capabilities in the deletion of segments versus syllables.

The predictions for the outcome of the experiment are as follows. It is expected that, in

keeping with results from similar experiments performed on children, the adults who

perform best on this measure of phonemic awareness are those adults who also perform

best on the reading test. A secondary prediction is that though subjects will perform

relatively well on this test, as deletion is a simple operation, they will fare better on the

Delete Syllable Task, which asks them to perform the same operation (deletion), but with

a more accessible unit of deletion (the syllable, rather than the segment).

METHOD

Subjects

Forty-two University of Arizona students participated in the experiment in exchange for

extra credit in a class. Nine students were excluded from the study. Of these one was not

a native or near-native speaker of English12, one did not complete the oral part of the

experiment, and one failed to follow directions. Six subjects were unable to complete

portions of the experiment due to a tape malfunction. Excluding these, the subject pool

consisted of thirty-three subjects who were unaware of the purpose of the experiment.

The subjects were arbitrarily divided into two groups, henceforth referred to as Group A

and Group B. There were 18 subjects in Group A and 15 in Group B.

12 Subjects who learned English while preliterate (for purposes of this experiment, before the age of three) were included.

Tasks and Procedure: Oral Test of Phonemic Awareness

For Experiment One, the test of phonemic awareness administered was the Delete

Segment Task. This is a classic phonemic awareness test which has been employed

routinely in phonemic awareness tests with children (Bryant, et. al., 1990; Bradley and

Bryant, 1983; Cunningham, 1990; Lundberg, et. al., 1988; Mann, 1986; Stanovich, et.

al., 1984; Tornéus, 1984; among others). In these tasks, subjects are given a list of

words and asked to delete the initial phoneme. The basic methodology employed here

differs little from that used in children’s tasks, though there are some minor adjustments.

These are detailed below.

Since the subjects in this case are adults, it was determined that the task had to be made

more difficult than parallel tasks which have been performed on children, while

remaining true to the original methodology. As such, the instructions, stimuli, and

response time were all slightly adapted. The instructions to the subjects were similar to

those given children, except that the real word/nonword status of the response was not

made explicit (that is, children were told that the correct response would be a real word of

English). The stimuli in the adult experiment were made considerably more difficult.

First, all correct responses were nonwords (as opposed to the children’s experiments, in

which all correct responses were words). Secondly, since the results of a pilot (see

Chapter Two) showed that literate adults have little trouble stripping off a single

consonant from a word (even when that consonant is not in a one-to-one relationship with


What do you actually ask them to do? You don't say the word 'phoneme', right?

the first grapheme of the word), all test items in this experiment began with consonant

clusters.13 Finally, the adult subjects were given a limited amount of time in which to

respond to a stimulus, unlike previous studies with children. All of these changes were

instituted to make the experiment more challenging to adults, with the goal of eliciting

higher error rates.

Subjects were played taped instructions through headphones. Each subject gave

responses into a microphone, which could be held in one’s hand or placed on a desk.

Subjects heard the following instructions:

We’re going to play some games with words. In each game, you will be given a set of instructions and some examples showing how the game is played. You will have a limited amount of time to respond to each item, and there is no stopping or going back. There are six games in all.

The instructions specific to Experiment One were as follows: “I’m going to give you a

word, and I want you to tell me what that word would be if the first sound were taken off.

Here are some examples.” The subjects then heard five practice items, followed by the

correct responses to those items. Upon completion of the practice items, subjects heard

the instruction, “Now you try,” which was followed by twelve test items, presented

approximately four seconds apart (as timed by an electric metronome).14 Following these

instructions, the expected response to the stimulus beauty is [yui].

13 Or, pehaps it should be said, what appear to be consonant clusters. Whether the [ky] sequence that begins a word like [kyut] is a cluster is a matter of some debate. This will be discussed further in the results section.

14 Recording equipment and timing were the same for all experiments.


The subjects didn't see this, right? This was used in the recording?

Each subject was presented stimuli from one of two lists; Group A subjects heard List 1

stimuli and Group B subjects heard List 2 stimuli. The stimuli on the two lists were

matched for frequency (using PHONDIC15) and phonological pattern. The stimuli shared

the following characteristics:

All test items were two syllable words in which the second syllable contained an unreduced, stressless vowel;

All test items began with what could be characterized as a CCV sequence, which was either a [Cy] word (i.e., [byuri]) a [Cw] word (i.e., [kwazi]), or a “straight” cluster (i.e., [fresko])

These three types of initial clusters were chosen based on the results of the Delete

Segment Pilot discussed in Chapter Two.

The practice items on Lists 1 and 2 modeled the Delete Segment Task on both [CV...]

words and [CCV] words, so that there would be no confusion about the unit subjects were

being asked to delete. After hearing both [bebi...ebi] and [trbyut...rbyut] modeled,

subjects knew that this was a truly a delete initial segment task, and not a delete onset

task.

The practice items and stimuli for Experiment One are given below:

15 ? PHONDIC is an ASCII file of 20,000+ English words. For each word, the file contains its transcription, spelling, part of speech, and frequency.


Give a transcription of each too.


all obstruent-liquid or did you have any with [s]-obstruent?


You might cite it as 'phondic.english'.

List 1 Stimuli List 2 StimuliPractice Items: Practice Items:

baby moodytribute translateplenty glory

charcoal checkmategraphite precinct

Test Items: Test Items:beauty bureautwenty treatyquarry quasifrantic frenzysticky stuccocubic fury

franchise climaxscarcely speciesmusic punyclergy proxyfresco credo

swallow statue

Tasks and Procedure: Written Test of Reading Ability

Subjects were administered a test of reading ability compiled from tests previously used

in General Record Exams (GREs). The test consisted of 37 questions, 27 of which were

drawn from the exam’s verbal ability section, consisting of both vocabulary and reading

comprehension questions. This test was deemed appropriate for adults because of its

similarity to the tests of reading ability often used in tests of the relationship between


I think you want to give a whole discussion of that experiment before going on to the GRE stuff, that is talk about the results and then go on to GRE stuff to talk about the correlation.

phonemic awareness and reading ability in children. Although the Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test - Revised (PPVT-R) is a popular test with very young subjects (Ball &

Blachman, 1991; Bowey & Francis, 1991), the Metropolitan tests are frequently used

with older children (as seen in Stanovich, Cunningham & Cramer, 1984; Cunningham,

1990; Hatcher et. al., 1994; Mann, 1993). The Metropolitan Achievement Tests, Primer

and Primary levels, are one such test and are used to “measure sound-symbol

correspondence, word recognition, and reading comprehension” (Cunningham, 1990, p.

432). Obviously, the written test administered in this experiment does not offer a direct

test of sound-symbol correspondence, but since the subjects in this experiment are literate

adults rather than preliterate children, this is an expected (and ultimately irrelevant)

difference.

The remaining ten (of 37) questions on the written test were drawn from the exam’s

analytical ability section, and served as a control: it was not expected that there would be

any correlation at all with subjects’ performance on phonemic awareness tasks, as no

correlations were found in control test with children. (Control tests which have been

used in phonemic awareness experiments with children include IQ tests (Stanovich, et.

al., 1984), music segmentation tests (Morais, et. al, 1986), and nonphonological

linguistic tests (i.e., syntax tests) (Lundberg, 1991)). If, in fact, a correlation was found

between the analytical questions and phonemic awareness ability, it would indicate that

subjects’ performance on phonemic awareness tasks was based more on analytical

strategy than linguistic skill.


The parenthetical suggests that the control point should have been made in the literature review section.


This is nice, but notice that it's unanticipated in your prose. That is, nothing before this says anything about there not being such a correlation, right?

Subjects were not informed as to the origin of the questions they received. They had 30

minutes to complete the test. All subjects were given the same test, and the test was used

as the measure of reading ability in Experiments 1-6.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Results: Oral Test of Phonemic Awareness

The results for the Delete Segment Task were coded as correct or incorrect. For all six

experiments in this study, any items for which all subjects in a group gave correct or

incorrect responses were excluded. This exclusion serves to minimize any item effect

(i.e., the ease or difficulty of a particular stimulus, rather than the ease or difficult of the

task) on the correlations being tested.

The method of coding for the Delete Segment Task was rather conservative; that is to

say, the only responses scored as “correct” were those in which the first consonant in a

cluster (but not the second) was deleted. Acceptable correct responses for both lists are

shown in the chart below:


So did you have an items like this?

List 1 Stimuli

correct response List 2 Stimuli correct response

beauty yui bureau yuro

twenty wnti treaty rii

quarry wri quasi wzi

frantic ræntk frenzy rnzi

sticky tki stucco tko

cubic yubik fury yurifranchise ræntyz climax lymæks

scarcely kersli species piiz

clergy lrdi puny yuni

music yuzk proxy rksi

fresco rsko credo rido

swallow wlo statue tætu

The coding of most of the clusters is clear; when the second consonant is anything but

[w] or [y], there is no question that it is a consonantal part of the onset. Performing the

Delete Segment Task correctly requires subjects to do more than separate onset and rime.

They must break the onset in two and extract the first of these consonants away from the

onset.16 Doing so exhibits a relatively sophisticated level of phonemic awareness:

subjects must be able to explicitly deal with the onset of a syllable as comprised of

separate units.

Maybe this should go under tasks/procedure? The [Cy] cases and [Cw] cases are a little

trickier. Are the [y] and [w] in these cases really the second consonants of consonant

clusters, or rather on-glides to the following vowel? Davis and Hammond (1994) argue

16 The special status of s-clusters will be discussed later in this chapter.

that [w] and [y] should be thought of differently: [w] is part of the onset (that is, the

second consonant of a consonant cluster in the cases cited here), but [y] is co-moraic with

the following vowel, and thus part of the coda. They cite the following evidence for

their claim:

· Cw has far fewer phonotactic constraints on it: Cw occurs before all vowels but [], [aw], and [oy], whereas [Cy] occurs only before [u] only (indicating that y+u sequences are in actuality a diphthong, /u/)

· In the language game Pig Latin, [CwV] is unambiguously treated as part of the onset (for example, [unswe] is always the response to “swoon”), while [CyV] sequences are subject to variation in which some respondents treat it as part of the vowel (so, “cute” might yield either [yutke] or [utke]), and

· In the “Name Game,” the [w] is deleted in [Cw] names like “Gwen” (gwn, gwn, bo bn, benæn fæn fo fn...), but the [y] is sometimes retained (that is, treated like part of the vowel) in [Cy] names like “Beulah” (byul, byul, bo byul,benæn fæn fo fyul...).

Thus, there are many reasons for thinking that the [Cy] words in this experiment are not

truly words that begin with consonant clusters, whereas the “Cw” words are. Why, then,

include them at all? First of all, Davis & Hammond’s evidence from Pig Latin and the

“Name Game” is not without variation; there are dialects of each game in which the [y]

of [Cy] sequences is treated as part of the onset. Secondly, in the pilot experiment,

subjects made many more errors on words beginning with [Cy] sequences than they did

words beginning with a single consonant, indicating that the [y] in [Cy] words is not an

indisputable part of the vowel. So, for the purposes of this experiment, all clusters ([Cy],

[Cw], and [CC]) will be treated in the same fashion, as sequences of two consonants.17

17 Davis and Hammond, in citing the Pig Latin response of [utke] for “cute,” suggest an


This is not making sense.


From a linguistic perspective, it is interesting to do so. Not so clear from an educational perspective.


The linguistic background should all be in the intro chapter, not in this chapter.

There is reason to think, however, that s-clusters (included among the “straight is [ki],

not [tki]. S-clusters violate the sonority hierarchy ([s] is more sonorous than [t], and yet

is further removed from the syllable nucleus in sticky) and so have been classified by

some as extrasyllabic (Clements and Keyser; 1983). Selkirk (1982) proposed a different

explanation for the anomalous behavior of s-clusters, positing that s-clusters at the

beginnings of words were actually complex onsets. In deleting the first phoneme, subjects

may be deleting the first licensed (non-extrasyllabic) element, or deleting a complex

segment, which can’t be broken down any further. Thus, responses to s-cluster stimuli

were marked correct if both the [s] and the following consonant were stripped off,

yielded some interesting results. ” clusters) should be treated differently, and that a

correct response to sticky in the Delete Segment Task

There were no items in the Delete Segment Task which all subjects got correct or

incorrect, so all items were included in the final analysis. The results of the Delete

Segment Task were as follows: Group A subjects had a mean correct response rate of

7.94 (out of 12), with a standard deviation of 3.22, and Group B subjects had a mean

correct response rate of 9 (out of 12), with a standard deviation of 2.17.

Results: Written Test of Reading Ability

intermediate stage of [utkye]. If, indeed, [y] is co-moraic with the following vowel in [Cy] words, it may be the case that when subjects are asked to delete the first segment in [myuzk] and respond with [uzk], there is an intermediate (unvoiced) [yuzk] response. In the current study, however, there is no way to determine if such an intermediate stage exists, nor is there any clear reason to assume that the proposed [iu] diphthong is treated differently from other diphthongs.


You've introduced those three categories, why not give us separate means for them.


The preceding 2-3 paragraphs shouldn't be in this section.


Not following here.

The written tests of reading ability and analytic ability were scored according to the

answer sheet in the Graduate Record Exam instruction book.

Results: Segment Deletion and Reading

There was no significant correlation between reading ability and ability to delete an

initial phoneme for either Group A or Group B subjects (Group A: r(18)= .464; Group

B: r(15)= -.040). This was an unexpected result given that in similar experiments with

children, the correlation between phonemic awareness and reading ability was

statistically significant. This result will be discussed further in the sections below.

Analytical ability, which was used as a control, was also not correlated with performance

on this task (Group A: r(18)= .149; Group B: r(15)= -.032). This was the expected

result, as no past phonemic awareness studies have shown a connection between PA and

intelligence, mathematical, or analytical ability.

3.2.2. Experiment Two: Delete Syllable Task

In the Delete Syllable Task, subjects are asked to strip off the initial syllable in a word.

In comparison with its sister test, the Delete Segment Task, it is designed to test whether

adults exhibit different capabilities in the deletion of segments versus syllables.

It is expected that performance on the Delete Syllable Task will exceed that on any of the

other tasks, because (1) deletion is the simplest phonological operation of the three


What's the difference between the two groups? If there isn't one, then why report the difference?


I'm thinking you want to draw a scatterplot for these correlations, no?


Good section. I'm understandng you're doing correlations, not regressions. This needs to be followed with a brief summary of the results in intuitive terms and brief discussion, e.g. what did we learn and how it leads to the next experiment.

employed in this set of experiments, and (2) syllables are more accessible than phonemes.

In fact, it is not expected that the best readers will do significantly better on this measure

of phonemic awareness than the poorest readers, since syllable deletion is a task requiring

a very low level of phonemic awareness, and should therefore be unrelated to reading

ability.

METHOD

Subjects

There were thirty-three subjects; the same subjects as in Experiment One.

Tasks and Procedure: Oral Test of Phonological Awareness

For Experiment Two, the test of phonological awareness administered was the Delete

Syllable Task. This phonemic awareness test has been used in tests with children, as it is

here, as a means of explicitly gauging the effect the unit of manipulation has on a task

(Lundberg, 1988). In this task, subjects are given a list of words and asked to delete the

initial syllable. The methodology is exactly the same as that in Experiment One, except

in this experiment subjects are told, “I’m going to give you a word, and I want you to tell

me what that word would be if the first syllable were taken off.” As in Experiment One,

the subjects heard five practice items (with their correct responses), followed by twelve

test items.


At some point in here, you need to talk about how the experiments were ordered. That is, if folks do better on later experiments, is it a practice effect?

Again, each subject was presented with stimuli from one of two lists. The stimuli were

the same as those in Experiment One. Group A subjects (who received List One stimuli

in Experiment One) received List Two stimuli in Experiment Two, and Group B subjects

heard List One stimuli in Experiment Two. This list-balancing was incorporated into the

design so that any conclusions drawn from a comparison of these sister experiments was

sure to be the result of differences in phonemic awareness rather than differences in the

difficulty of stimuli.


The test of reading ability and the control test of analytical ability were the same as in

Experiment One.


Results: Oral Test of Phonological Awareness

The coding of correct and incorrect answers for the Delete Syllable Task was

considerably more complicated than that for the Delete Segment Task. In one of life’s

great linguistic ironies, even though the basis of phonemic awareness research is that

syllabic awareness is innate and phonemic awareness is a more complicated ability only

learned through exposure to an alphabet, it is much easier to determine what comprises a

segment than what comprises a syllable for this task. Since phonemic awareness research

on children has traditionally employed stimuli that are either monosyllabic or disyllabic

and obviously bimorphemic, it is of little help in determining how the answers to this

Delete Syllable Task should be coded.

It is widely accepted that the syllable is a bona fide phonological unit (Anderson, 1969;

Fudge, 1969; Kahn, 1976). There are syllable-based writing systems, syllable-based

language games, and phonological rules which depend on syllable boundaries. So, it is

not the existence of the syllable which is in question here, it is the composition of the

syllable.

The stimuli in the Delete Syllable Task are all bisyllabic words with primary stress on the

first syllable a nonreduced vowel in the second syllable. Some of the stimuli contain a

medial consonant cluster (i.e. fresco), while others contain a single medial consonant (i.e.

baby). How should these words be syllabified? Consider the cases of fresco and baby

If responses that violate phonotactic rules of English are marked as incorrect, there are

still several possible responses to the question, “What does X sound like when the first

syllable is removed?” For fresco, three possibilities present themselves: [sko], [ko], and

[o]. For baby, there are two: [bi] and [i]. How are we to determine which response(s)

should be considered appropriate?

As discussed in Chapter One, theories of syllabification confuse, rather than illuminate,

the matter. The Maximal Onset Principle (Pulgram, 1970), the Sonority Dispersion

Principle (Clements, 1988) and theories of ambisyllabicity (Kahn, 1976) all lead to


This discussion sems to be repeating stuff that appeared in ch.1…. I think you should do a straight analysis in terms of maximal onset, and then go back and do another analysis if necessary. Don't confuse the reader before showing why all this is necessary. (Although if you do go this route, you should announce beforehand that you will provide several different codings that will make sense as the discussion unfolds.)

different coding of answers in the Delete Syllable Task, as demonstrated in the chart

below:

TEST ITEM Maximize Onset Sonority Dispersion Ambisyllabicity

frsco fr.sko frs.ko frsk.ko or frs.sko

baby be.bi be.bi be.bi or beb.bi

The Maximize Onset and Sonority Dispersion principles both force a strict interpretation

of correct answers in the Delete Syllable Task. If either principle is used as the basis of

coding, only one correct answer presents itself for each test item. Theories of

amibsyllabiicity, on the other hand, allow for several different responses, since medial

segments may belong to both syllables.

Recall that Treiman & Zukowski (1990), Treiman & Danis (1988), and Meador & Ohala

(1993) all found support for ambisyllabicity in syllabification tasks. This would support

a liberal coding of responses in the Delete Syllable Task, by which frsk.ko or frs.sko

could be the correct syllabification of fresco, and therefore [ko] or [sko] could be the

correct response.

Two other considerations support a more liberal coding of responses in the Delete

Syllable Task. The first consideration is a linguistic one: it is not clear from the three

studies cited above how the nonreduced vowels in the stimuli affect syllabification. Are

the second syllables in fresco and baby more likely to attract consonants than the second

syllables of master and palace? The second consideration is strategy-oriented. Recall


Way too much repetition.

that the instructions to subjects in this experiment are, “I’m going to give you a word, and

I want you to tell me what that word would be if the first syllable were taken off.” In

cases of ambisyllabicity, it is possible that these instructions could elicit two different

responses. Let’s say two subjects hear the word baby and judge the medial consonant

ambisyllabic. When prompted for a response, Subject 1 might view the task as

identifying the first syllable [beb] and spitting out the remainder [i]. Treiman and Danis

found that subjects tended to “force” singly spelled consonants into one syllable or

another, even in the most stereotypically ambisyllabic environments. Subject 2, on the

other hand, might view the task not as stripping off the first syllable, but identifying the

second, and so would say [bi].

Given all these factors, responses in the Delete Syllable Task were only marked incorrect

if they violated rules of English phonotactics (for example, the response [ksi] to the

stimulus proxy). Acceptable responses are given in the chart below:

List 1 Stimuli Exp. 2 response List 2 Stimuli

Exp. 2 responseTest Items: Test Items:

Beauty di, ti, i bureau ro, o

Twenty ti, i treaty di, ti, i

Quarry ri, i quasi zi, si, i

Frantic tk, k frenzy zi, i

Sticky ki, i stucco ko, o

Cubic bk, k fury ri, i

Franchise tyz, yz climax mæks, æks

Scarcely li, sli species iz, siz, iz

Clergy di, i puny ni, i

Music zk, k proxy si, i

Fresco ko, o, sko credo do, o

Swallow lo, o statue tu, u

Subjects performed extremely well on the Delete Syllable Task. When all responses

(both Group A and Group B) were considered, there was a mean correct response rate of

10.15 (out of 12), with a standard deviation of 3.09.

The chart below offers support for the decision to code subjects’ responses to the delete

syllable task as argued above.

Delete Segment Delete Syllable

Maximize Onset Sonority Dispersion Ambisyllabicity

Mean for All Subjects = 8.46 Mean = 7.26 Mean = 7.69 Mean = 10.15


I think this is going to be a useful chart, but I'm not quite following it.


But now we don't know if that's generous coding or what. Give us the stricter analysis as well.

If the Maximize Onset or Sonority Dispersion Principles were used to code responses,

subjects would actually have performed worse on the Delete Syllable Task than the

Delete Segment Task, an unexpected result that cannot be reconciled with previous

phonemic awareness experiments. A coding according to a theory of English

ambisyllabicity, however, is consistent with earlier findings that the syllable is easier to

manipulate than the segment.

There were no items on either list that all subjects got incorrect. There were no items

which all subjects in Group A got correct, however, there were seven items which all

subjects in Group B got correct. The items were: quarry, franchise, scarcely, music,

clergy, fresco, and swallow. There appears to be no difference in phonological pattern

between the items that all subjects got correct vs. those that all subjects did not get

correct (beauty, twenty, frantic, sticky, and cubic). This may be explained by the fact that

subjects, on the whole, performed extremely well on the Delete Syllable Task, and made

few errors. Group A subjects had a mean correct response rate of 9.33 (out of 12), with a

standard deviation of 3.51, and Group B subjects had a mean correct response rate of 4.33

(out of 5), with a standard deviation of .82.


The scoring of the written tests of reading ability and analytic ability was exactly the

same as in Experiment One, as it was the same test.

Results: Segment Deletion and Reading


I'm not following why you want this level of detail at this stage.

There was no significant correlation between reading ability and ability to delete an

initial syllable for either Group A or Group B subjects (Group A: r(18) = .295; Group B:

r(15)= -.100). This was the expected result for the syllable deletion task, particularly

given the high mean correct response rate. Syllable deletion is an easy enough task that

all subjects performed well on it. Since syllabic awareness is a low-level, arguably innate

phonological skill, it is not at all surprising that it is unrelated to reading ability.

What is surprising is that analytical ability, the control measure, was correlated with

ability to delete an initial syllable in Group B subjects: Group B: r(15) = .546,

significant at the .05 level. (There was no such correlation in Group A subjects: r(18)

= .379, p=.061). We have seen that syllabic awareness is not a product of reading ability,

and apparently not facilitated by it. Perhaps the reason that the best analyzers were the

same subjects who performed best on the Delete Syllable Task is that they took an

analytical approach to the task. Viewing syllable deletion as an analytic task (a

possibility since it does not require any special linguistic skill or sophisticated

phonological awareness), they were able to strip the first syllable from a word easily.

Another explanation may be found in a task-order effect, a consequence of the fact that

subjects performed the delete syllable task immediately after the delete segment task. At

least two subjects switched to a delete-segment strategy in the middle of the delete

syllable task and consequently made errors on several consecutive test items, rendering a

lower score on the Delete Syllable Task than expected.


I'm not seeing how that bears on the correlation. If there's no logical basis for treating A and B differently, how can we make sense of the fact that one group exhibits this correlation and the other doesn't?


Not a huge r though.


Still not clear why you're analyzing A and B as meaningful….

3.2.2. Comparison of Experiments One and Two

It was predicted that there would be a significant difference between performance on the

Delete Segment Task on the Delete Syllable Task. Results were mixed. A t-test showed

that Group B subjects did perform significantly better on the Delete Syllable Task than

the Delete Segment Task (t=-3.79628, p<.001). However, there was no parallel

difference in performance by the Group A subjects (t= -1.636739, not significant). That

is, Group A subjects did not perform significantly better on the Delete Syllable Task than

the Delete Segment Task.

The two charts below show subjects’ performance on the deletion experiments as

correlated with reading ability:

Performance on Delete Segment and Delete Syllable Tasks as Correlated with Reading Ability (Group A):


Good charts. Are these the first ones? First, there should be more, second, explain how to read them.


now this looks like it could help with the previous problem. That is B's improved performance could be a cause/function of the correlation in the previous section?

Performance on Delete Segment and Delete Syllable Tasks as Correlated with Reading Ability (Group B):

To recap the findings thus far (as illustrated on the charts):

(1) Group A subjects performed no better on the syllable-based task (an unexpected

result), and although there appears to be a correlation of both tasks with reading

ability, this correlation was not significant (another unexpected result).

(2) Group B subjects performed significantly better on the syllable-based task than

the segment-based task (an expected result), but there was no correlation with

reading ability for either the syllable-based or segment-based task (an unexpected

result).

These mixed results are confusing. The difference found in Group B between segment

deletion and syllable deletion abilities was expected because segment deletion requires a

sophisticated level of phonemic awareness. If such a difference exists (as it appears to)

why wasn’t it connected to subjects’ reading ability?


The fundamental issue is that the A vs. B difference should be a random factor for you. Hence, the difference between A and B is noise, right?


Very good, but give us the results that cross the groups. I'm still not sure I want to hear about group differences if I don't know what the basis of that difference is.

Group A subjects performed no differently on the Delete Segment and Delete Syllable

Tasks, and there was no correlation between Segment Deletion ability and reading ability.

These are two unexpected results, and yet they are easier to explain than the one

unexpected result for Group B subjects. It was expected that subjects’ would fare better

on syllable deletion than segment deletion, because the latter requires a more

sophisticated level of phonemic awareness. The data show that Group A subjects found

it no more difficult to strip off an initial segment than an initial syllable. A likely

explanation is that literate adults have achieved a high enough level of phonemic

awareness than segment deletion is not a challenge. The only difference between

segment deletion and syllable deletion, skill-wise, is that one is acquired while the other

is innate. The lack of a correlation between segment deletion and reading only supports

this. Even the worst readers must possess some level of phonemic awareness to be

literate, and that level includes the ability to delete an initial phoneme from a word.

With this as a working theory, the question that remains is why Group B subjects

performed significantly better on the syllable based task.

3.3. Substitution Experiments

3.3.1. Experiment Three: Substitute Segment Task

Experiment Three is the Substitute Segment Task, in which subjects are asked to

substitute the initial segment in a word with another segment. Like Experiment One, it is

designed to test whether a correlation exists between reading ability and phonemic

awareness.

Experiment Three, like Experiment One, is a segment manipulation task. However, it is

predicted that subjects will not perform as well as they did in Experiment One.

Substitution tasks are considered more difficult than deletion tasks because subjects must

in a sense perform two operations: the must delete an initial segment (as in Experiment

One), but then replace it with a new segment. This is considerably more difficult than

deletion alone.

The results of Experiment Three will also be compared with the results of its sister

experiment, the Delete Syllable Task (Experiment Four). It is predicted that subjects will

perform significantly better on Experiment Four, since it requires only syllable

manipulation.

METHOD

Subjects

The subjects were the same as in previous experiments.


For Experiment Three, the test of phonemic awareness administered was the Substitute

Segment Task. This measure of phonemic awareness test has been used in tests with

children (Stanovich, et. al., 1984; Treiman, 1985), but as in Experiment One, the


Should this be the 'substitute syllable' task?

methodology needs to be adapted slightly with adults. An example of instructions in a

children’s substitution task (Stanovich, et. al., 1984) is the following: “If I say the word

go and then change the first sound by changing it to /n/, the new word will be no.” As in

delete segment tasks with children, both the input and output in this case are real words.

Moreover, the segment to be substituted is explicitly pronounced.

The methodology here was adapted for two reasons. First, the task had to be made more

challenging for adults. Second, it seemed preferable to avoid pronouncing the substituted

segment in isolation as (1) the taped stimuli would make perception of isolated obstruents

extremely difficult, and (2) using the consonant + schwa pronunciation (i.e. [d] for [d]) -

a syllabic pronunciation - would cloud the distinction between the Delete Segment and

Delete Syllable Tasks.

To solve these problems, the instructions to subjects were as follows: “I’m going to give

you two words, and I want you to tell me what would happen if you replaced the first

sound in the first word with the first sound in the second word.” As in previous

experiments, the subjects then heard five examples which modeled the task (“What

would happen if you replaced the first sound in frozen with the first sound in credo?...

[pause]... [krozn].”). Following these instructions, the expected response to the stimulus

pair brisket/fluster is [frskt]. By altering the instructions in this way, the task was

made more difficult (subjects were not “given” the substituted phoneme, but had to

isolate it themselves), but less confusing (there is nothing to indicate that the unit to be

substituted is the minimal syllable [k]).

For each of the twelve test items, there were two stimuli: the stimulus that had its first

segment replaced, and the stimulus containing the replacement segment. There were two

lists of stimuli (sets), matched for frequency and phonetic pattern between sets using

PHONDIC. All test stimuli were two syllable words beginning with a consonant cluster

and with primary stress on the first syllable. This pattern was chosen for two reasons:

(1) This is the same basic phonetic pattern as the words in Experiments One & Two,

and

(2) As with Experiments One and Two, it was felt that stimuli with word-initial

clusters would generate higher error rates among subjects (thus eliciting more

dramatic differences in performance).

The practice items and stimuli for Experiment Three are given below:


Always spelled as two letters? I thought the implication of the pilot of ch.2 was that you were going to include phonetic-orthographic mismatches.

List 1 Stimuli List 2 StimuliPractice Items: Practice Items:profit/blarney frozen/credobrutal/clipper sweater/trickybandage/suction mandate/pistoltravel/pliant treason/freewaysecret/bundle tandem/dismalTest Items: Test Items:blister/presto slander/grizzlyprincess/blunder triplet/bleachersblanket/crumple problem/clobbercrimson/twinkle brandish/tractorquisling/spastic drastic/sloganflounder/clumsy crumpet/slendertrinket/cluster quagmire/skepticgremlin/plastic crinkle/flankingprosper/glisten brisket/flusterfrosting/blasted proxy/plentyplaintiff/scarlet swelter/crystalcrafty/plasma traction/clanging


The written test of reading ability and control test of analytical ability were the same as in

previous experiments.



Answers that were coded as correct in the Substitute Segment Task are listed in the table

below:

List 1 Stimuli correct response List 2 Stimuli correct responseblister/presto plstr slander/grizzly gændr

princess/blunder brnss triplet/bleachers brplt

blanket/crumple klækt problem/clobber krblm

crimson/twinkle trmzn brandish/tractor trænd

quisling/spastic spsl drastic/slogan slæstk

flounder/clumsy klwndr crumpet/slender slmpt

trinket/cluster krkt quagmire/skeptic skægmayrgremlin/plastic prmln crinkle/flanking frkl

prosper/glisten grspr brisket/fluster frskt

frosting/blasted brst proxy/plenty prksi

plaintiff/scarlet skentf swelter/crystal kltr

crafty/plasma præfti traction/clanging kræken

The coding of correct answers in this experiment follows the reasoning of the coding

from Experiment One, in that the only answers coded as correct were those in which only

the first segment of a consonant cluster was replaced. As in Experiment One, responses

that treated s-clusters as complex segments were marked correct. Phonotactics were also

taken into account in the interpretation of some responses. For example, the expected

response to the quisling/spastic pair is *[spwsl] if s-clusters are treated as complex

segments. Since *[spw] is an illegal onset in English, responses beginning with the legal

cluster [sp] were accepted.

Subjects performed extremely poorly on the Substitute Segment Task. There were no

stimuli on either list that all subjects got correct. For Group A, there were also no

stimuli which all subjects got incorrect, but the mean correct response rate was 3 (out of

12), with a standard deviation of 2.57. There were three sets of stimuli on List Two that

were excluded from the results because they elicited incorrect responses from all subjects

in Group B. Excluding these stimuli, Group B subjects had a mean correct response rate

of 1.67 (out of 9), with a standard deviation of 1.71.

The three excluded pairs of stimuli were (1) brandish/tractor, (2) drastic/slogan, and (3)

traction/clanging. It is interesting that brandish/tractor gave subjects difficulty, because

it was the only pair (on either list) for which transposing the entire onset of the second

word [tr] would yield the same results as transposing only the first phoneme [t]. It seems

that subjects may have been thrown off by this, and may have second-guessed their

responses.

Drastic/slogan is one of the pairs that involves an s-cluster. However, there were other

pairs on the same list with s-clusters (e.g., crumpet/slender) to which some subjects gave

correct responses, so no generalizations can be made. There is nothing distinct about the

traction/clanging pair. In fact, subjects made so many errors on this task (with only 3 or


You're going into irrelevant detail here. Your hypothesis, the most important aspect of the exposition, says you should be looking at their overall level on this task and comparing that with the previous tasks and with reading ability and analytic ability. Once that's answered, then you can talk about these sorts of details, no?

4 subjects getting any given response correct), it is difficult to categorize the excluded

items.


The written tests of reading ability and analytic ability were the same as in the two


Results: Segment Substitution and Reading

Results were mixed. It was predicted that there would be a correlation between reading

ability and performance on the segment substitution task. For Group A subjects, there

was no significant correlation between these two measures (r(18) = .186), but for Group

B there was a significant correlation (Group B: r(15) = .642, p<.01).

Analytical ability, which was used as a control, was not correlated with either group’s

performance on this task (Group A: r(18) = .049; Group B: r(15) = .232)).


same issue….also charts…..


Brief discussion should follow results section, here and elsewhere.

3.3.2. Experiment Four: Substitute Syllable Task

Experiment Four is the Substitute Syllable Task, in which subjects are asked to replace

the initial syllable in a word with a syllable from another word. In comparison with its

sister test, the Substitute Segment Task, it is designed to test whether adults exhibit

different capabilities in the substitution of segments versus syllables.

It is expected that performance on the Substitute Syllable Task will exceed performance

on the Substitute Segment Task because syllable manipulation requires a lower level of

phonological awareness than segment manipulation. It is also expected that performance

on this task will not be as good as performance on the Delete Syllable Task, since

substitution is a more complicated operation than deletion. As with the Delete Syllable

Task, it is not expected that the best readers will do significantly better on this measure of

phonemic awareness than the poorest readers.

METHOD

Subjects

Subjects were the same as those in Experiment Three.


For Experiment Four, the test of phonological awareness administered was the Substitute

Syllable Task. The methodology and stimuli are the same as those used in Experiment

Three, except that the unit of manipulation is the syllable. Subjects were told “I’m going


Keep us appraised of the order that you ran these in.

to give you two words, and I want you to tell me what would happen if you replaced the

first syllable in the first word with the first syllable in the second word.” As in previous

experiments, subjects heard five practice items (with their correct responses), followed by

twelve test items. Following these instructions, the expected response to the stimulus

brisket/fluster is [flskt].

Lists were counterbalanced as in Experiments One and Two; subjects received stimuli

from whatever list they did not receive in the Substitute Segment Task.


The test of reading ability and the control test of reading ability were the same as in




The coding of correct and incorrect answers for the Substitute Syllable Task was based

on conclusions drawn in Experiment Two. The most common correct answers are given

in the table below:

List 1 Stimuli common response

List 2 Stimuli common response

blister/presto prstr slander/grizzly grzdr

princess/blunder blnss triplet/bleachers blitlt

blanket/crumple krmkt problem/clobber klblm

crimson/twinkle twksn brandish/tractor trækd

quisling/spastic spæsl drastic/slogan slo(s)tk

flounder/clumsy klmdr crumpet/slender slnpt

trinket/cluster klskt quagmire/skeptic

skpmyr

gremlin/plastic plæsln crinkle/flanking flækl

prosper/glisten glspr brisket/fluster flskt

frosting/blasted blæst proxy/plenty plnsi

plaintiff/scarlet skrtf swelter/crystal krstr

crafty/plasma plæsti traction/clanging klæn

This listing is not exhaustive, however. Consider the blanket/crumple example.

Subjects are asked to replace the first syllable of blanket with the first syllable in

crumple. The research cited in Experiment Two tells us that these words yield more than

one syllabification possibility. Both words have stressed, short vowels in their first

syllables, which may create an ambisyllabic environment for the second consonant in the

medial cluster. So, though the preferred syllabifications for blanket and crumple are

blan.ket and crum.ple (in which the word is split between the consonants in the cluster),

blank.ket and crump.ple are also possible. Thus, responses to the Substitute Syllable

Task for this item could be [krmkt], [krmpkt], [krmpt], and [krmt].18 Even

though all of these responses would have marked correct, the latter two never presented

themselves.

18 These last two are based on the assumption that when subjects delete the initial syllable of blanket prior to substitution, they delete the ambisyllabic consonant along with it, leaving only [t]. This strategy was addressed in the discussion of Experiment Two.

Subjects exhibited a fair performance on the Substitute Syllable Task. There were no

items on either list that all subjects got correct or incorrect. For Group A subjects, there

was a mean correct response rate of 5.17 (out of 12), with a standard deviation of 3.79.

For Group B subjects, there was a mean correct response rate of 8.33 (out of 12), with a

standard deviation of 3.58. This performance was worse than that on the Delete Syllable

Task, as predicted.


The scoring of the written tests of reading ability and analytic ability was the same as in


Results: Syllable Substitution and Reading

For both Groups A and B, there was a significant correlation between reading ability and

the ability to substitute syllables (task (Group A: r(18) = .580, p<.05; Group B: r(15)

= .536, p<.05). This was an unexpected result, since this experiment involved syllable

manipulation, and syllabic awareness is a skill that is thought to be unrelated to reading

experience.

There was no significant correlation between analytical ability and performance on this

task, as expected (Group A: r(18) = .180; Group B: r(15) = .064).

3.3.2. Comparison of Experiments Three and Four


t-test, right?


I'm thinking every time you cite a mean, you should give an appropriate chart….maybe not quite that many though….


Substitute Segment Task and the Substitute Syllable Task, with subjects performing

better on the syllable task. A t-test confirmed that this was the case for both Group A

and Group B subjects. (Group A: t = 2.33, p<.05; Group B: t = 7.70; p<.05).

It was also correctly predicted that there would be no correlation of analytical ability with

ability to substitute a segment or syllable. This prediction was borne out.

However, the charts below illustrate some of the unexpected results in Experiments Three

and Four:

Performance on Substitute Segment and Substitute Syllable Tasks as Correlated with Reading Ability (Group A):

Performance on Substitute Segment and Substitute Syllable Tasks as Correlated with Reading Ability (Group B):


Explain how to read the charts.


In general, given the different ways these two tasks are coded, I'm not sure how much sense it makes to compare means across these. I see that you should definitely do correlations, and I see that you can profitably compare means within the syllable set or within the segment set.

To review, it was predicted that there would be a significant correlation between reading

ability and performance on the Substitute Segment Task, but this was only found in

Group B subjects (the .185 correlation in Group A subjects was not significant). It was

predicted that there would not be a correlation between reading ability and performance

on the Substitute Syllable Task, but a significant correlation was found for both groups of

subjects.

How should these results be interpreted? There were unexpected results in Experiments

One and Two, to be sure, but they made sense upon closer examination. A missing

connection between reading ability and segment deletion ability was not unexpected

when subjects’ fine performance on the phonemic awareness task (differing not at all

from performance on the syllable deletion task) was taken into account. Here, though,

the findings are more difficult to explain. Performance on the segment and syllable tasks

does seem to differ, indicating that subjects exhibit syllabic awareness abilities superior

to their phonemic awareness abilities. This is not problematic until we consider that

subjects’ reading ability, which we expect to effect segmentation ability (as found in


actually, do you do correlations across syllable tasks vs. segment tasks? Perhaps the correlation between syllable tasks and reading is 'secondary' in some sense, mediated by the segmental tasks?


So the key finding that is at odds with the review is that the syllable tasks correlate with reading ability too. You might try a multiple regression between all the tasks and reading ability and see if you can pick out independent effects. (Is there such a thing as a multiple correlation?)

studies with children), effects syllabification ability (at which we expect all adults to

express similar competence).

A closer examination of the results suggest that the data from the substitution

experiments are better dismissed as anomalies than explained. As mentioned above,

subjects’ unexpectedly poor performance on the Substitute Segment Task and

inconsistent performance on the Substitute Syllable Task both hint at a problem with the

task. Scrutiny of responses shows that the task demands were too strenuous; many

subjects were confused by the directions and simply did not perform up to par. With

such high error rates on both experiments, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the

data.. Had only Experiment Three performance been flawed, the results could still be

attributed to a difference in syllabification and segmentation abilities. With performance

on both tasks so low, it is more likely the result of task confusion.

A few examples illustrate the confusion subjects’ experienced in the substitution tasks.

There were many subjects who transposed the stimuli in the “Replace the first

segment/syllable of A with the first segment/syllable of B” instructions. When instructed

to replace the first syllable or segment of triplet with the first syllable or segment of

bleachers, they responded not with [blit_let] (in the syllable substitution task) or [br_plet]

(in the segment substitution case), but with [tr_ptRerz] or [tlitRerz]. Other incorrect

responses show that subjects were far removed from the task at hand. One subject gave

[kr_kflæk] as her response to the substitute segment task for the stimulus

crinkle/flanking (correct response: [fr_kel]), which is a compound of the first syllables

of both words. A different subject gave [klæk_k_t] as her response in the substitute

syllable task for the same stimulus (correct response: [flækel]), which is difficult to

make heads or tails of.

Unlike errors in the other experiments, many of the errors in Experiments Three and Four

are impossible to characterize. In Experiment One (the Delete Segment Task), nearly all

errors involved the deletion of an onset, rather than a segment. In Experiment Five (the

Reverse Segment Task, to be discussed below, in which subjects were asked to reverse

the segments beginning the syllables in a word) the majority of errors occurred when

subjects reversed the syllables in a word, rather than the segments. In both of these cases,

the errors fit a pattern. Moreover, the errors are an attempt on the part of the subject to

make the unit of manipulation larger and more accessible (an onset or a syllable as

opposed to a segment), thus making the task easier. Thus, these errors support the theory

that phonemic awareness tasks are difficult because the manipulation of phonemes is an

unnatural undertaking. By making the unit of manipulation larger, subjects avoid having

to perform a true phonemic awareness task.

In the substitution experiments, the errors are not always part of a pattern (as shown by

the crinkle/flanking examples), and even when they are (i.e. the cases in which subjects

transposed the directions), they do not make the task any easier. Thus, the errors in

Experiments Three and Four are task-oriented, not linguistic, in nature. This, taken with


I'm thinking this is too much phonological detail.

subjects’ poor performance on the experiments, indicates that the data from these

experiments should be excluded from any larger analysis of adults’ phonemic awareness

abilities. The methodology in the substitution experiments was flawed; the instructions

were obviously too complicated for most subjects to process.

3.4. Reversal Experiments

3.4.1. Experiment Five: Reverse Segment Task

Experiment Five is the Reverse Segment Task, in which subjects were asked to reverse

the initial segments of a given word’s syllables. As in the other segment-based

experiments, the results of the Reverse Segment Task will be compared with those of a

reading test to test the correlation between the measures. It is predicted that reading

ability will be correlated with segment reversal abilities, since those abilities require a

sophisticated level of phonemic awareness.

Other predictions for the outcome of Experiment Five are parallel to predictions made for

previous segment-based experiments. It is predicted that performance on the segment

reversal task will be worse than that on the segment deletion task, since reversal is a more

difficult operation. When reversing the segments in a word, subjects essentially need to

conduct two segmental abstractions (versus one in a deletion task): they must extract the

first segment in each syllable of a word from the rest of the syllable, and then reposition

those segments in each other’s place. Moreover, previous experiments have shown that

the initial and final phonemes in a word are easier to manipulate than the medial

phonemes in a word (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989; Mann & Brady, 1988). Since the

reversal task requires subjects to access and manipulate medial phonemes, it is expected

to be more difficult.

Performance on the Reverse Segment Task should be inferior to that on the Reverse

Syllable Task, for the reason cited many times in the last few sections: segment

operations require phonemic awareness, whereas syllabic operations only require a lower

level of phonological awareness.

METHOD

Subjects

The subjects were the same as in previous experiments in this chapter.


Experiment Five’s test of phonemic awareness was the Reverse Segment Task. This is

the one measure of phonemic awareness that has not been used in tests with children.

Segment Reversal is a difficult task, requiring a phonological sophistication that

preliterate and newly literate children simply do not have. The methodology here is

based on that used in syllable reversal tasks with children (see below), with the only

difference being that the unit of manipulation is the segment.

Subjects were told, “I’m going to give you a word, and I want you to tell me what that

word would be if the first sounds in each syllable were reversed.” As in previous

experiments, the subjects then heard five practice items that modeled the task, followed

by twelve test items. Following these instructions, the expected response to the stimulus

baptize is [tæpbyz].

The stimuli in Experiment Five were all two syllable words with primary stress on the

first syllable and unreduced vowels in the second syllable. They all had the phonetic

pattern CVCCVC(C) and were matched for frequency between lists using PHONDIC. In

the practice items, the correct responses which were modeled were those in which the

syllable boundary occurred between the CC sequence in the middle of the word (e.g.

hectic [tkhk]; sucrose [ruksoz]. The practice items and stimuli for Experiment

Five are given below:

List 1 Stimuli List 2 StimuliPractice Items: Practice Items:hectic sequingarnish nitratebackwash tadpolechastise pepticrustic sucroseTest Items: Test Items:baptize cashmeretoxic septichormone hydratecombat cosmicmastiff sentencedictate fabricmystic mascotpublish tarnish

costume cyclonegarlic formatphosphate vibratemustang darling


The written test of reading ability and control test of analytical ability were the same as in




Answers that were coded as correct in the Reverse Segment Task are given in the table

below:

List 1 Stimuli correct response


baptize tæpbyz cashmere mækir

toxic saktk septic tpsk

hormone morhon hydrate rydhet*

combat bmkæt cosmic mazkk

mastiff (s)tæ(s)mf* sentence tnsns

dictate tkdet fabric ræbfk*

mystic (s)t(s)mk* mascot (s)kæ(s)mat*

publish lub(p)* tarnish nrti

costume (s)t(s)kum* cyclone lykson*

garlic largk format morfæt

phosphate fsfet vibrate rybvet*

mustang (s)te(s)mæ* darling lardi

The coding of correct answers in this experiment was very straightforward. The only

answers that were coded as correct were those in which the first and third consonants in

the CVCCVC(C) word were reversed. As in Experiments One and Three, s-clusters

were treated somewhat differently, so that answers that treated s-clusters as a complex

segment (i.e. [stæmf] as a response to the Reverse Segment Task for mastiff) were also

marked as correct.

Stimuli marked above with an asterisk (*) contain a medial cluster that could be

syllabified in more than one way. Though it was expected that subjects would place a

syllable break in between the two consonants of the stimulus (since Treiman and

Zukowski found subjects preferred this syllabification over 90% of the time), responses

that indicated a different syllabification were also marked correct. Since the word

cyclone, for example, could be syllabified as cyc.lone or cy.clone, both [lykson] and

[kyslon] are possible right answers. With some stimuli, like vibrate, the alternate

syllabification (vi.brate, instead of vib.rate) produces a phonotactically illegal, but not

unpronounceable, response to the Reverse Segment Task. For instance, the

syllabification vi.brate yields the response [bryveyt] to this task. This is a

pronounceable and legal string of letters in English on the surface, but if subjects are

performing the task correctly, the syllabification of this string should be [by.vreyt],

which has an illegal cluster as the onset to its second syllable. As it happens, no subject

ever gave a response to the Reverse Segment Task that indicated a CV.CCVC

syllabification, even when the resulting onset cluster was perfectly legal. Thus, the only

relevant correct responses are those listed in the chart above.

Performance was poor on the Reverse Segment Task. There were no items for which all

subjects in either group gave correct responses. Group A subjects had a mean correct

response rate of 2.42 (out of 12), with a standard deviation of 2.83. There were three

items on List 2 for which all Group B subjects gave incorrect responses; these were

excluded from the analysis. On the remaining items, Group B subjects had a mean

correct response rate of 2.2 (out of 9), with a standard deviation of 2.40.

Interestingly, the three items which all Group B subjects got incorrect were hydrate,

cyclone, and vibrate. These were the only items on either list with tense (long) vowels in

the first syllable, which might lead subjects to prefer a CV.CCVC (vs. CVC.CVC)

syllabification. This could create two problems for subjects. First, in the cases of

hydrate [hy.dreyt] and vibrate [vy.breyt], the segment reversal for a CV.CCVC

syllabification would result in the responses of [dy.hreyt] and [by.vreyt], both of

which contain syllable-initial clusters [hr] and [vr] that violate the phonotactics of

English. Second, a CV.CCVC syllabification of a stimulus item requires that subjects

extract the first consonant of the second syllable from a consonant cluster (vs. simply

reversing the whole onsets in a CVC.CVC word like fabric [fb.rk]). Because this puts

an extra burden on the subject (he/she must break up an onset and then reverse two


You are comparing this with the previous ones, but I) you're not making that comparison explicit and ii) you're not doing stats, presumably a simple t-test here.

segments), it is in a sense combining aspects of the Delete Segment and Reverse Segment

tasks, and it is not surprising that subjects did not do well.

In retrospect, the three problematic items in List Two (hydrate, cyclone, and vibrate)

should have been excluded from the study or at the very least balanced with

phonologically similar items in List One. This was an oversight on the part of the

researcher. However, given Group A’s poor performance on the Reverse Segment Task

(a mean correct response rate of 2.42 vs. Group B’s 2.2), it is not clear that the Group B

subjects would have performed much better on this task had they been tested on different

stimuli.

As predicted, subjects performed much worse on this measure of phonemic awareness

than they did on the Delete Segment Task.


The written tests of reading ability and analytic ability were the same as in the two


Results: Segment Reversal and Reading

There was a strong, statistically significant correlation between reading ability and the

ability to reverse an initial phoneme in Group A subjects (r(18) = .831, p<.05). There

was no significant correlation between reading and segment reversal in Group B subjects


As before, too much phonological detail. I say this because this detail, though fascinating to phonologist Mike, doesn't really bear on the hypothesis, right?

(r(15) = .387). Since it was expected that these two measures would be correlated, these

were mixed results.

There was no correlation in either group between analytical ability and performance on

this task (Group A: r(18) = .367; Group B: r(15) = -.226). This was the expected

result.

3.4.2. Experiment Six: Reverse Syllable Task

Experiment Six is the Reverse Syllable Task, in which subjects are asked to switch the

two syllables in a word.

It is expected that performance on the Reverse Syllable Task will be superior to

performance on its sister test, the Reverse Segment Task. Because syllabic awareness is

subsumed by phonemic awareness, subjects are expected to perform quite well on the

syllable-based task, but have difficulty with the segment-based task.

Performance on the Reverse Syllable Task is expected to be worse than on the Delete

Syllable Task, since reversal is a more complicated operation than deletion.

Since all adults have achieved a reasonably sophisticated level of phonological awareness

that includes and surpasses syllabic awareness, it is predicted that reading ability will

have no effect on syllable reversal ability.

METHOD

Subjects

Subjects were the same as in the previous Experiment.


The test of phonological awareness used in Experiment Six was the Reverse Syllable

Task, in which subjects are asked to swap the two syllables of a word. The methodology

in this experiment was modeled after Treiman & Danis (1988), who used it to test the

syllabification of intervocalic consonants. They told their subjects, “We’re going to play

a game with words. I’ll show you how it goes by giving you some examples. When I

say grandfather, you say father...grand. When I say catfood, you say food..cat” and

then gave them bisyllabic (noncompound) words as stimuli. The instructions in this

experiment were virtually the same (and parallel those in Experiment Five). Subjects

were told, “I’m going to give you a word, and I want you to tell me what that word would

be if the two syllables were reversed.” They then heard the practice items (with their

correct responses) and twelve stimuli.

Stimuli were the same as in Experiment Five, with any given subject receiving whatever

list he or she did not receive in that experiment.


The test of reading ability and the control test of reading ability were the same as in




As in Experiment Five, which used the same CVCCVC(C) words, it was presumed that

subjects would syllabify stimuli between the medial consonants. However, responses

consistent with an alternate syllabification (CV.CCVC) were also deemed acceptable

when the response did not violate any rules of English phonotactics (alternate responses

are indicated by parentheses in the table below). A correct syllable reversal for hydrate

could then be [rethyd] or [drethy].

Acceptable responses are as follows:



baptize tyzbæp cashmere mirkæ

toxic sktk septic tksp

hormone monhor hydrate (d)rethy(d)

combat bætkm cosmic mk(k)z

mastiff tfmæs sentence tns(s)n

dictate tetdk fabric (b)rkfæ(b)

mystic (s)tkm(s) mascot (s)ktmæ(s)

publish lpb tarnish ntr

costume (s)tumk (s) cyclone (k)lonsy(k)

garlic lkgr format mætfor

phosphate fetfs vibrate (b)retvy(b)

mustang (s)tæm(s) darling ldr

Subjects performed extremely well on the Reverse Syllable Task. There was one item

which all Group A subjects got correct; the mean correct response rate on the remaining

items was 9.39 (out of 11) with a standard deviation of 1.79. There were three items that

all Group B subjects got correct; the mean correct response rate on the remaining items

was 7.53 (out of 9), with a standard deviation of 1.30.

The items that all subjects got correct are not distinguished from other list items by any

notable phonological characteristics. They were baptize, combat and garlic in List One,

and cyclone in List Two.

Why did subjects do so well on the Reverse Syllable Task, when it was predicted that

they would do worse than on the Delete Syllable Task? A simple answer is that reversal

is not a more difficult operation than deletion. This is contradicted, however, by both

common sense and empirical results. If deletion and reversal are equally complex, how

can we explain the vast difference between performances on the Delete and Reverse

Segment Tasks? The methodology and stimuli for those two experiments were the same

as in their sister experiments, so the type of operation must be the culprit. The only

solution is that task performance is based on a more complicated interaction of unit of


I need to see means and charts that show this is the case. Also, I'm still fretting about order of these experiments….

manipulation and type of manipulation than previously thought. Reversal is a more

difficult operation than deletion, but only when the linguistic unit is partially inaccessible.

Since syllables are so accessible to literate adults, differences in operation difficult are

overshadowed. Differences between these operations surface in segment-based tasks,

since phonemes are more unattainable units. This will be discussed further below.


The reading and analytical tests were the same as in previous experiments.

Results: Syllable Reversal and Reading

There was no significant correlation between reading ability and ability to reverse the

syllables in a word for either Group A or Group B subjects (Group A: r(18) = .204;

Group B: r(15)= .083). This was the expected result.

There was also no significant correlation between reading ability and ability to reverse

the syllables in a word for either Group A or Group B subjects (Group A: r(18) = .232;

Group B: r(15)= .007, also the expected result.

3.4.3. Comparison of Experiments Five and Six


Reverse Segment Task and the Reverse Syllable Task. A t-test confirmed that this was

the case for both groups (Group A: t = -10.65, p<.001; Group B: t = -14.72, p<.001).

Subjects found it much easier to reverse two syllables in a word than to reverse two

segments. This was the predicted result. Segment reversal, which requires both the

manipulation of an inaccessible unit (the segment) and a difficult operation (reversal),

apparently requires a level of phonemic awareness that most literate adults have not yet

achieved. Also, as predicted, there was no correlation between subjects’ ability to

perform reversal tasks (of either segments or syllables) and their analytical ability.

Performance on Reverse Segment and Reverse Syllable Tasks as Correlated with Reading Ability (Group A):

Performance on Reverse Segment and Reverse Syllable Tasks as Correlated with Reading Ability (Group B):

A mixed result, illustrated on the charts above, is that segment reversal ability was only

correlated with reading ability in Group A subjects (the correlation in Group B

subjects, .387, was not significant). As illustrated by the flat trend lines in the charts

above, the ability to reverse syllables was not correlated with reading ability in either

group of subjects (the predicted result).

3.5. Summary of Experiments

In the concluding section below, the results of all the experiments are analyzed more

comprehensively in the context of past and future phonemic awareness research.

Implications for further study and applications of these findings are also discussed.


Is there a lot of prose missing here?

4.0. Conclusion

This dissertation has examined the nature of phonological and phonemic awareness in literate adults. In this final section, it will be shown that

1. Adults demonstrate differing levels of phonemic and phonological awareness, even though all are phonemically aware to some degree,

2. There is a correlation between reading ability and phonemic/phonological awareness in adults, and that

3. These conclusions about phonemic awareness and reading ability in adults have both linguistic and educational implications.

Let us explore each of these conclusions in turn.

In Chapter Two, past research on phonemic awareness was discussed. A common claim

about phonemic awareness is that it exists alongside alphabetic experience. Although

there has been some evidence that phonemic awareness can develop in the absence of

alphabetic experience (Mann, 1991), and some evidence that those who possess

alphabetic literacy may be phonemically unaware (Cossu, et. al., 1993), there is much

more evidence that phonemic awareness is found only in those with alphabetic experience

(Read, et. al, 1986; Morais, et.al., 1986). Efforts to determine whether phonemic

awareness is a prerequisite to learning an alphabet or if phonemic awareness is a fallout

from alphabetic literacy often yield confusing results (Bryant, et. al, 1990); the strongest,

least uncontroversial conclusion that can be drawn is that the two abilities develop in

tandem.

Literate, English-speaking college students, are all, to some degree, phonemically aware.

Recall that both Adams (1990) and Treiman (1993) identify levels of phonemic

awareness, which are judged on the basis of phonemic awareness task performance

(Adams) and spelling errors (Treiman). In both the Adams and Treiman models, literate

adults have achieved the highest level of awareness; they are able to manipulate the

phonemes in a word, as demonstrated by Delete Segment Task (Adams), and they make

spelling mistakes that reflect learned phoneme-grapheme correspondences, like s-u-p-r-i-

s-e (Treiman). While learning how to read and write, they pass through many stages of

phonological awareness. They learn that words can be broken down into syllables,

syllables into rimes and onsets, rimes and onsets into segments. Ultimately, they break

the alphabetic code, learning that written words are composed of segments 19 and those

segments correspond in relatively regular ways with the letters of the alphabet. These

skills enable them to perform well on phonemic awareness tasks that elude preliterate

children and illiterate adults.

4.1 Recap of results from Chapter Three

However, not all adults reach the same level of phonemic awareness. Adams only divides

phonemic awareness into five levels, and these levels are useful in comparing literate

adults with children or illiterates. They do not suffice, though, for comparing adults to

each other. Just as phoneme counting serves to distinguish literates and illiterates, the

tasks discussed in Chapter Three serve to distinguish very phonemically aware from

19 An interesting area of future research might be a study of emergent phonemic awareness in the blind. Pring (1994) found that the blind never go through a logographic (whole-word) stage in reading, since they are unable to see words and word breaks on the printed page. From the very beginning, blind readers must conceive of their writing system alphabetically.

moderately phonemically aware adults. Recall the six tasks (with corresponding

experiment numbers in parentheses):

Segment-based tasks Syllable-based tasksDeletion Delete Segment Task (1) Delete Syllable Task (2)Substitution Substitute Segment Task (3) Substitute Syllable Task (4)Reversal Reverse Segment Task (5) Reverse Syllable Task (6)

Although Adams would classify phoneme deletion, substitution and reversal tasks as

tapping into the highest level of phonemic awareness, she also discusses the fact that

reversal tasks are more difficult than deletion tasks. So, since the tasks in this experiment

require the manipulation of different phonological units (segment and syllable), in

different ways (deletion, substitution, and reversal), we would expect that subjects might

perform better on some tasks than others, even though all adults are to some degree

phonemically aware. The man correct response rates for the six tasks (taking into

account all responses) are listed in the table below:

Mean Correct Response Rates on the Six Tasks

Del. Seg. Del. Syll. Sub. Seg. Sub. Syll. Rev. Seg. Rev. Syll.List A subjects 66% 78% 25% 43% 21% 87%List B subjects 75% 94% 14% 70% 18% 88%

As is clear from the correct response rates, subjects performed well on the Delete

Segment, Delete Syllable, and Reverse Syllable Tasks, had a mid-range performance on

the Substitute Syllable Task, and performed poorly on the Substitute Segment and

Reverse Segment Tasks. In short, some tasks were more difficult than others.


Nice numbers, but I'm thinking you need a chart with lines so we can see slopes. See what I mean?

4.1.1. Recap and analysis of Segment-Based Task results

Moving on to more specific predictions, it was expected that subjects’ phonemic

awareness (as measured by their ability to perform well on tasks which tap into phonemic

awareness) would be correlated with reading ability. The charts that follow summarize

the findings from the experiments in Chapter Three.

First, it was predicted that subjects’ performance on segment-based tasks (which tap into

the highest levels of phonemic awareness) would be correlated with reading ability, but

not with analytic ability. The two tables below summarize the predictions and findings

(predicted findings are shaded):

Correlation of Segment-Based Tasks with Reading Ability

Deletion Tasks Substitution Tasks Reversal TasksGroup A Group B Group A Group B Group A Group B

Prediction Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesResult No No No Yes Yes Nor-value .464 -.040 .186 .642 .831 .387

Correlation of Segment-Based Tasks with Analytical Ability


Prediction No No No No No NoResult No No No No No Nor-value .149 -.032 .049 .232 .367 -.226

The results are mixed. In no case was performance on a segment-based task correlated

with analytical ability, which was the expected result. However, performance on


Group A and B differences still don't make any sense. I'm thinking that you need to collapse them into a single group. You probably still want to mention in passing differences between the groups, but the main effects don't have anything to do with A vs. B, since that's a random factor.

segment-based tasks did not correlate with reading ability across-the-board, as predicted.

Though Group B’s performance on the Substitute Segment Task and Group A’s

performance on the Reverse Segment Task were correlated with reading ability, neither

group’s performance on the Delete Segment Task was correlated with reading ability.

In light of these mixed results, a new measure called “Total Segment Score” was

calculated for each group, combining performance on the three segment based tasks.

This score was then measured against performance on the analytical and reading

measures. The results are illustrated on the graphs below:

Group A Total Segment Score as Correlated with Reading and Analytical Score


Not following what this is. In general, you might check the sentences before EACH figure to make sure you are adequately laying out for the reader what is in each figure.

Group B Total Segment Score as Correlated with Reading and Analytical Score

In both groups, the total segment score is significantly correlated with reading ability at

the p=.05 level (A r(18)=.678; B r(15)=.568), but not with analytical ability (A

r(18)=.254; B r(15)=-.013). This is exactly what we would predict: adults who are the

most phonemically aware (as demonstrated by their overall performance on segment-

based tasks) are those who are the best readers. Moreover, their phonemic awareness is

not correlated with their analytical ability. So, although the results of the individual

segment-based tasks are less clear-cut, overall performance on segment tasks supports the

idea that adult PA and reading ability are correlated.

4.1.2. Recap and analysis of Syllable-Based Task results

With regard to the syllable-based tasks, it was predicted that subjects’ performance on

these tasks would not be correlated with reading ability, as syllable-based tasks are

expected to tap into a lower level of phonological awareness than the segment-based

tasks, a level at which all literate adults would be comparable with regard to phonological

ability. The results are summarized in the following tables (with predicted outcomes

shaded):

Correlation of Syllable-Based Tasks with Reading Ability


Prediction No No No No No NoResult No No Yes Yes No Nor-value .295 -.100 .580 .536 .204 .083

Correlation of Syllable-Based Tasks with Analytical Ability


Prediction No No No No No NoResult No Yes No No No Nor-value .379 -.546 .180 .064 .232 .007

As with the results of the segment-based tasks, the results here are mixed, and not

entirely as expected. In neither Group A nor Group B did subjects’ performance on

syllable deletion or reversal correlate with reading ability, but in both groups,

performance on syllable substitution was (unexpectedly) correlated with reading ability.

Strangely, Group B’s performance on the Delete Syllable Task was correlated with

analytical ability (though it was predicted that no measure of phonological awareness

would be correlated with analytical ability). Again, an overall measure of performance

on syllable-based tasks (“total syllable score”) was calculated to shed light on the matter.

The results are illustrated in the graphs below:

Group A Total Syllable Score as Correlated with Reading and Analytical Score

Group B Total Syllable Score as Correlated with Reading and Analytical Score

In Group A subjects, the total syllable score is correlated with reading ability at the p=.05

level (r(18)=.585), but not with analytical ability (r(18)=.395). In Group B subjects, the

correlation between total syllable score and reading ability is not statistically significant

(B r(15)=.422, although it can be seen in the trend line that it is much stronger than the

correlation between total syllable score and analytical ability for the same subjects

(r(15)=.079).

While it was predicted that performance on syllable-based tasks would not be correlated

with reading ability in any case, it is telling that total syllable score is more strongly

correlated with reading ability than analytical ability for both sets of subjects, and is

significant in the case of Group A subjects. Subjects did perform at various levels of

ability on the syllable-based tasks; could it be that these differences reflect differences in

levels of phonological awareness? Is it the case that adults not only demonstrate differing

levels of phonemic awareness (as demonstrated by performance on segment-based tasks),

but also differing levels of phonological awareness (as demonstrated by performance on

syllable-based tasks)? And how might these different levels of awareness correlate with

reading ability?

4.1.3. Total Phonological Awareness Score

In an attempt to tackle some of these questions, a third aggregate score was computed:

“Total Phonological Awareness Score.” This score was computed by calculating

subjects’ performance on all six experimental tasks, with segment-based tasks and

syllable-based tasks combined. The results were then checked for correlations with

reading ability and analytical ability. The results are listed in the tables below, along

with a recap of the Total Segment and Total Syllable Score findings (predicted results are

shaded):


You've established that BOTH correlate, right?

Correlation of Total Phonological Awareness Performance with Reading Ability

Total Segment Score Total Syllable Score Total PA Score

Group A Group B Group A Group B Group A Group BPrediction Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Result Yes Yes Yes No Yes Nor-value .668 .568 .585 .422 .673 .505

Correlation of Total Phonological Awareness Performance with Analytical Ability

Total Segment Score Total Syllable Score Total PA Score

Group A Group B Group A Group B Group A Group BPrediction No No No No No No

Result No No No No No Nor-value .254 -.013 .395 .079 .345 .061

In Group A subjects, the total phonological awareness score is correlated with reading

ability at the p=.05 level (r(18)=.673), but not with analytical ability (r(18)=.345). In

Group B subjects, the correlation between total syllable score and reading ability is not

statistically significant at the p=.05 level (r(15)=.505) (statistical significance at the p=.05

level would require that r be greater than or equal to .515). Still, the correlation is much

stronger than that between total syllable score and analytical ability for the same subjects

(r(15)=.061). The graphs below provide a visual illustration of these results:

So, the three aggregate measures require some unpacking. Total Segment Score was

correlated with reading ability and not with analytical ability (both as predicted). Neither

Total Syllable Score nor Total Phonological Awareness score were correlated with

analytical ability (as predicted). However, both Total Syllable Score and Total

Phonological Score were significantly correlated with reading ability for Group A

subjects, and there was a near-significant correlation of these measures with reading

ability in Group B subjects.

4.2. The Degree of Difficulty Model

What conception of adult phonemic and phonological awareness can help to explain these

results? The “degree of difficulty” model, outlined below, sheds some light on the

matter. It will be argued that although all adults possess some degree of phonemic

awareness, when a task is sufficiently difficult, differences in phonemic and phonological

differences emerge and are reflected in task performance, and those differences are

correlated with reading ability.

Phonemic awareness theory holds that segment-based tasks will be more difficult that

syllable-based tasks. For each set of “sister” experiments (the same task performed on

segments vs. syllables), a t-test was run to determine whether subjects’ performance on

segment-based tasks differed significantly from their performance on syllable-based

tasks. The results are summarized in the chart below:

Difference in Subjects’ Performance on Segment vs. Syllable Tasks


Prediction Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesResult* No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes


You need a better name!

t Stat -1.64 -3.80 -2.34 -7.70 -10.65 -14.72P(T<=t) one-tail 0.06 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.00*p < .05

In all cases, subjects had lower correct mean response rates for the segment-based tasks

than the paired syllable-based tasks. Excepting Group A’s performance on the deletion

task, these differences were statistically significant at the p=.05 level.

So, it can be safely claimed that the syllable-based tasks in this study were more difficult

than the segment-based tasks. This is consistent with past phonemic awareness research

and theory. Returning to the original six tasks, let’s assign a degree of difficulty (d.o.d.)

to each task. These are given in the following table:

Segment-based tasks (2) Syllable-based tasks (1)Deletion (1) Delete Segment; d.o.d.=2 Delete Syllable, d.o.d.=1Reversal (2) Reverse Segment, d.o.d.=4 Reverse Syllable, d.o.d.=2Substitution (3) Substitute Segment, d.o.d.=6 Substitute Syllable, d.o.d.=3

These numbers are admittedly arbitrary, but serve a conceptual purpose. They were

assigned in the following fashion: all syllable-based tasks have a d.o.d. of 1, while

segment-based tasks have a d.o.d. of 2. This distinction reflects the “subattentional

status” (to borrow a phrase from Adams) usually given to phonemes. Similarly, deletion

tasks, the easiest tasks, get a d.o.d. of 1, while reversal and substitution and permutation

are assigned (2) and (3) respectively (overall correct response rate on substitution tasks

was worse than that on reversal tasks). With these assignments, let us return to a revised


An interesting idea, but maybe the way to do this is to break down each task into pieces. Do they have a differing number of these in the right directions?


Is this backwards?

version of the chart from the beginning of this chapter that summarized mean correct

response rates by task:

Mean Correct Response Rates By Task (Percentages shaded and in bold are those that were correlated with reading ability)

Del Syll Rev Syll Del Seg Sub Syll Rev Seg Sub Segd.o.d. 1 2 2 3 4 6

List A subjects 78% 87% 66% 43% 21% 25%List B subjects 94% 88% 75% 70% 18% 14%

The chart now lists response rates sorted by degree of difficulty. The double line in the

middle of the table separates tasks in which no performance was correlated with reading

ability from those in which at least one group’s performance was correlated with reading

ability. It also separates a d.o.d. of 2 or less from a d.o.d. of 3 or greater.

It is postulated that the all the literate adults in this study have achieved a level of

phonemic awareness up to and including degree of difficulty 2, thus explaining why the

performance on the first three tasks in the table above was generally good. These are the

tasks to the left of the double line; correct response rate for these tasks was 66-94%, so

subjects correctly responded at least two-thirds of the time. None of these performances

were correlated with reading ability. In more concrete terms, this implies the following:

all literate adults, by virtue of their alphabetic experience, are expected to have some

degree of phonemic awareness. In this study, that level of awareness includes the ability

to delete the initial phoneme of a word, and to delete and reverse the syllables in a word.

When tasks tap into this level of phonemic awareness, the d.o.d. of the tasks will be low

(2 or less), the task performance will be uniformly good (better than 66% correct

response rate), and the slight differences in subjects’ performances will not be correlated

with reading ability.

The tasks to the right side of the double line in the chart above are those with a degree of

difficulty of 3 or higher. These include the Substitute Syllable, Reverse Segment and

Substitute Segment tasks. Because of the difficult of these tasks, performance was poor.

Subjects answered correctly only 14%-70% of the time (except for Group B’s

performance on the Substitute Syllable task, subjects gave correct answers less than half

the time). For all three of these more difficult tasks, performance by at least one group

was significantly correlated with reading ability. These tasks are presumably, because of

their difficulty, tapping into higher-level phonemic and phonological awareness abilities,

which some adults possess and some do not. Syllables are more available to adults than

segments, and reversal and substitution tasks are more difficult than deletion tasks.

When these differences present themselves, they are correlated with reading ability.

4.4. Summary and Conclusions

In this chapter, we have made the following observations about phonemic and

phonological awareness in literate adults:

Overall performance on segment-based tasks (“Total Segment Score”) was significantly correlated with reading ability in both groups of subjects.

Overall performance on syllable-based tasks (“Total Syllable Score”) was significantly correlated with reading ability in Group A subjects.


But even syllable/phonology effects correlate at this level. This is an important result, one with implications for adult literacy reading instruction, no?

Overall task performance (“Total Phonological Awareness Score”) was significantly correlated with reading ability in Group A subjects (and was a strong trend in Group B subjects).

There were no correlations of any aggregate measure (Total Segment Score, Total Syllable Score or Total Phonological Awareness Score) with analytical ability, the control measure.

Recall that in phonemic awareness studies with children, the main conclusion is that

reading ability and performance on phonemic awareness tasks are positively correlated.

An even more interesting finding from children’s studies is that performance on more

difficult measures of phonemic and phonological awareness (say, an Adams level four

counting task) is more likely to be correlated with reading ability than a lower level

measure (for instance, an Adams level two oddity task). An examination of results from

adults in this study reached the same conclusion:

Task difficulty was the factor that determined whether performance on the six individual tasks was correlated with reading ability. Subjects performed better on syllable-based tasks than segment-based tasks (a linguistic measure of difficulty), and better on deletion tasks than on substitution or reversal tasks (a non-linguistic measure of difficulty). When a task was sufficiently difficult, differences in phonological and phonemic awareness levels of subjects emerged, and these differences were correlated with reading ability.

To recap the conclusions thus far, it has been shown that adults, though all phonemically

aware to some degree, exhibit different levels of phonemic and phonological awareness.

These differences are most apparent when the tasks are sufficiently difficult. Overall

correlations of task performance with reading ability are strong, and inconsistencies are

explained by differences in task difficuly. What are the implications of these findings?

Contrary to popular belief, adults to not use wholly different strategies in reading than

children, relying on whole word knowledge or morphology to the exclusion of

phonological analysis. Though Forster, in his work on prefix stripping, showed that

adults exhibit morphological interference in the recognition of words, grapheme-

phoneme relationships play a part as well. As indicated in the introduction, this is

probably particularly true in the identification of unfamiliar words (which may be

familiar after orthographic recoding).

Segments, even for literate adults, are less available units of phonology than syllables.

This gives credence to theories of the syllable as the basic unit of perception. Segments

are unnatural, learned constructs. One oft-cited argument for the existence of the

syllable is the presence of alphabetic writing systems. Yet, an examination of the history

of writing systems indicates that the invention of the alphabet was a historical accident of

sorts; an attempt by Greeks to adopt a Semitic syllabary ill-suited to their richer syllabic

inventory (Olson, 1993).

4.5. Implications

This research also has implications for the educational and applied linguistics

communities. Studies with children have shown that a combination of phonemic

awareness training and phonics may be the best way to facilitate learning to read. PA

training for adults might then be incorporated into (1) Adult literacy programs, (2)


too quick!

English-as-a-second-language programs (or any such programs in which the L2 employs

an alphabetic orthography), and (3) Reading enrichment programs.

Phonemic awareness research need not be limited to children and special populations.

Just because literate adults have had significant experience with an alphabetic writing

system does not mean that their relationship with phonemic awareness is over;

preliminary evidence from this study indicates that it continues to develop, and to serve

them throughout adulthood.

Summary of Correlations (Correlations in bold are significant at the p = .05 level)

Group A Reading Score Analytical ScoreReading Score 1Analytical Score 0.439786 1Delete Segment Task 0.464077 0.149008Reverse Segment Task 0.831242 0.366641Substitute Segment Task 0.185878 0.048682Delete Syllable Task 0.294728 0.379228Reverse Syllable Task 0.203664 0.232132Substitute Syllable Task 0.580289 0.179847Total PA Score 0.673095 0.34571Total Segment Task Score 0.66774 0.253796Total Syllable Task Score 0.585082 0.394829

Group B Reading Score Analytical ScoreReading Score 1Analytical Score 0.056152 1Delete Segment Task -0.03967 -0.0324Reverse Segment Task 0.387164 -0.22604Substitute Segment Task 0.642144 0.232003Delete Syllable Task -0.10047 0.545671Reverse Syllable Task 0.082538 0.007204Substitute Syllable Task 0.535983 0.064104Total PA Score 0.50542 0.061202Total Segment Task Score 0.567699 -0.01333Total Syllable Task Score 0.42181 0.079216

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