Phonemic awareness is only one (albeit critically important) member of a class of phonological processing skills that involve the use of the sound structure of oral language in learning to read. (Adams, 1990; Badian, 1993; Cornwall, 1992; Crowder & Wagner, 1992; Felton & Brown, 1990; Torgesen, 1993; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987, Wagner et al., 1993; Wagner et al., 1994).

Another phonological skill, besides phonemic awareness, which has been implicated in reading progress is speed of lexical retrieval, also known as phonological recoding in lexical access. It is usually assessed through the ability to name colours, letters, numbers and objects quickly upon their presentation. It is considered relevant to reading because it is indicative of how readily children can gain access to a sound, a sound-sequence, or a word meaning (Bowers & Swanson, 1991; Cornwall, 1992; Davis & Spring, 1990). Both naming speed and sight word reading depend on automatic, rapid symbol retrieval, and Wolf (1991) argues an important connection between naming speed for both letters (and numbers) and word recognition.

When reading, one must apply a conversion from the print into one of:

(i) a phonological representation constructed through oral reading or subvocalization. This process allows appropriate selection of the word's meaning via the access to the phonologically coded lexicon, the link having been developed through oral language experience.

Or (ii) employing a visual representation of the printed word to gain direct access to the lexicon. This system represents the most common strategy for skilled readers, but is useful only when the earlier phonologically-based system has been practised sufficiently to achieve automaticity (Adams, 1990).

In the early stages of reading, a child who relies on visual strategies needs to find a unique visual cue for each new word - a strategy doomed to failure as the vocabulary requirements become overwhelming later in primary school (Freebody & Byrne, 1988; Tunmer & Hoover, 1993).

There has been some debate about the relationship between phonemic awareness and naming speed. Wagner and Torgesen (1987) considered them both a reflection of a unitary phonological process; however, other research (Badian, 1993; Cornwall, 1992; Felton & Brown, 1990) found no correlation between the two skills. Studies by Torgesen, Wagner and colleagues (Wagner et al., 1993; Wagner et al., 1994; Torgesen et al., 1994) avoided some of the methodological problems plaguing earlier longitudinal correlational and training studies. They employed multiple measures across a range of phonological processing tasks in longitudinal and cross-sectional studies. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed five distinct but correlated phonological processing abilities. Their assessment involved multiple measures of each construct, and they used the resulting latent variables (representing the common variance among the measures) to preclude task specific, or error-variance.

They found two relatively uncorrelated latent abilities through their naming speed tasks, depending on whether the presentation was in a serial-trial, or isolated-trial format, that is, whether response-time was to digits (or letters) flashed serially onto a screen, or response time to name each of a group of digits (or letters) presented on cards. The significance of two such abilities is as yet unclear; however, it is consistent with other findings highlighting the predictive capacity of naming speed tasks (Bowers & Swanson, 1991; Catts, 1991; Cornwall, 1992; Davis & Spring, 1990; Felton, 1992; Tunmer & Hoover, 1993) for later reading ability.

It is also generally accepted that slow naming speed is characteristic of reading disabled students (Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). This does not imply, however, that one can improve reading by providing practice at naming various items quickly. For example, knowledge of letter names is highly predictive of future reading progress, yet an emphasis on teaching letter names to students at risk has not been of benefit to the target students’ reading progress. Letter name knowledge is most likely a marker, indicative of a range of helpful literacy experiences that a child with such knowledge has experienced. Learning letter names, while useful, does not replicate all the additional experiences that are in fact strong determinants of a student’s likely progress. Additionally, the focus on "underlying process variables" (Blachman, 1994) has been largely discredited (Arter & Jenkins, 1979).

The appropriate question is not how to improve naming speed per se, but rather, how to improve reading in children with problems in accessing phonological information from their mental lexicon. In a small study involving both good and poor readers Rubin, Rotella, Schwartz, and Bernstein (1991) found that teaching phonological awareness skills to third grade children also improved their naming ability. While this result has no direct implications for improved reading it does support the view of Wagner, Torgesen and colleagues that their five phonological processing variables are related. Various researchers have examined this question, and Table 1 gives an indication of the correlations found in a selection of recent studies.

Table 1

Correlations Reported In Recent Studies

Another latent phonological ability is that of phonetic recoding in working memory. The beginning reader has to be able to decode a series of graphemes, and temporarily order them in a sound-based store in order to carry out the cognitively expensive task of blending. The efficiency with which this storage is performed optimises or diminishes the attentional capacity available for these blending and subsequent word-comprehension and sentence-comprehension tasks. The Wagner, Torgesen et al., studies used digit span (oral and visual), sentence memory, and a distractor memory task to assess this ability. Gathercole, Willis, and Baddeley (1991) suggest that non-word repetition may be a purer measure, as it avoids the possibility of using lexical and semantic cues to assist recall. Wagner and Torgesen (1987), in their review of research, noted that the major memory problem for poor readers is coding items phonetically - the deficit is a specific auditory working memory problem not a general one. The view that phonetic recoding in working memory is an important determinant of early reading success is supported by a number of researchers (Catts, 1991; Felton, 1992; Hurford, Darrow, Edwards, Howerton, Mote, Schauf, & Coffey, 1993; Lindamood, Bell, & Lindamood, 1992; Shapiro, Nix, & Foster, 1990; Webster & Plante, 1992).

Gathercole et al. (1991) replicated their previous finding that phonological memory skills were also significantly associated with vocabulary knowledge. In their view, the efficiency of the short term phonological store is a major determinant of ease of retrieval of a sound sequence from long term memory. Interestingly, the Wagner et al. (1994) longitudinal study found that the development rate for phonological memory paralleled that of vocabulary development in the first three years of schooling.

As with phonological coding in lexical access (or naming speed) it is not yet apparent how (if at all) weaknesses in this area might be addressed. Wagner and colleagues conclude that attempting to improve this skill through memory training, or mnemonic strategies has not been, nor is it likely to be, fruitful though they raised the interesting possibility that phonetic recoding in working memory may improve as reading skill develops. Their longitudinal study (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994), however, failed to find any such trend. Although the rates of development across the five phonological processing abilities were somewhat uneven over the first three years of schooling, phonological memory was the slowest of the five. Nevertheless, there was considerable stability across the 5 variables over time, lending support to the view that they are causal to beginning reading, and not ephemeral individual differences soon submerged under the effects of schooling. This is not to argue that reading itself plays no role in enhancing phonological processing - only that it is not an overwhelmingly unidirectional role (Wagner et al., 1993).

The two remaining latent phonological abilities (those most strongly related to later reading skill) comprise phonological awareness. They are phonological analysis (or segmentation), and phonological synthesis (or blending). It has been argued (Torgesen et al., 1992; Yopp, 1992) that synthesis develops earlier than analytic skills. Solomons (1992), and Caravolas and Bruck (1993) consider segmentation quite difficult for children below age five or six, whereas Bryen and Gerber (1987) suggest that only by age six can 70% of children succeed in phonemic segmentation tasks. Certainly in the Torgesen et al. comparison of two phonological awareness training programs, blending skills (What word is this: /k/, /a/, /t/?) were more readily taught to first year students than were segmentation skills (Which of these three words begins the same as cat?). Their intervention study highlighted the need to teach both skills if promotion of decoding is the objective.

Phonological Representations

Perfetti (1991, 1992) has argued that, in general, low scores on tests of phonological processing are indicative of problems with the quality of word representation in the reader’s lexicon. When representations of words are unstable (or stable but incorrect), matching a stimulus word with the correct phonemically stored counterpart will be slow and error prone, as the child rejects competing phonemically similar but semantically impossible responses. These written word representations are acquired through phonemic mappings to letters but are dependent also on some degree of awareness that words are constructed of manipulable, meaningless speech segments. An alternative explanation - that poor performance on phonological tasks is caused by inadequate auditory discrimination of speech sounds - has not been supported by recent studies (Cornelissen, Hansen, Bradley, & Stein, 1996; Gibbs, 1996).

If these phonological representations are imprecise then tasks such as phonological recoding in lexical access and phonological recoding in working memory may also present problems for such students, and there is ample evidence that they do (Rubin et al., 1991). For example, if the phonological representation of "dog" is unreliable then the association between the name of the animal and its meaning will be vague. A picture of a dog may quickly evoke its meaning but the phonologically assembled label is slowed because other similar labels (e.g., god, dock, bog) may need to be rejected. Scrolling through a range of possibilities requires more time than accessing a clear uniquely described form.

Similarly, tasks involving short term auditory memory may be difficult because the orally presented stimuli (numbers in this case) are not effortlessly and instantly encoded as unique phonological forms - the process of storage and retrieval is inefficient, reflected in lower performance. Whereas continuous rehearsal may partly compensate in digit span forward, digits reversed prevents the use of this strategy, and (it was thought) may better reflect the deleterious effects of phonologically inadequate representations. Lindamood described "comparator function" as a critical variable in reading skill, one in which (as for example, in blending) a stimulus or sequence must be retained in working memory whilst part of it is manipulated. Phoneme deletion (one of the most complex of phonemic awareness tasks) requires just this capacity.

The relatively effortless, automatic, rapid response to text that is the hallmark of skilled reading requires an orthographic lexicon at once comprehensive, and instantly and accurately accessible. It has been argued that the development of the orthographic lexicon in reading has its basis in phonological representations rather than in a visual store of whole words (Perfetti, 1991, 1992).

The connections between word spellings and these representations are a necessary element in orthographic knowledge development, hence it is unsurprising that spelling has sometimes been used as a means of assessing the quality of these representations (Perfetti, 1992)

Landerl, Frith, and Wimmer (1996) noted that in normal readers coactivation of orthographic knowledge occurs in phonological tasks (that is, knowledge of a word’s spelling is used to make judgements about the sounds in a word) whereas for reading disabled readers this coactivation is much less evident. They argue that there is only a weak link between the phonological and orthographic representations in reading disabled readers such that hearing a word does not evoke its spelling, and seeing a word fails to bring forth its sound segments. An inability to establish such reliable links has dire consequences for skilled reading and spelling, and may be due to the imprecision with which sounds are encoded in the phonological representation store.

Elbro et al. (1994) suggest that inadequate phonological representations impede the development of phonological awareness and further that it is at the individual phoneme level that this failure of differentiation may occur. Perhaps the most refractory to phonemic awareness training and to phonics instruction are those to whom Elbro et al. refer. If that is so, some argue, then specialised and intensive phoneme awareness may be required. For example, in the Lindamood (1969) program considerable emphasis is devoted to kinaesthetic (in addition to auditory) cues to assist the recognition of and discriminability between phonemes. Hence, children are taught lip and tongue positions and how the breath is used in order to increase the salience of the sonic differentiation. There may be students who require such specialised intervention, although as yet there is doubt as to how to identify them. Parsimony suggests that, at least for students beyond beginner age, systematic, synthetic phonics programs (such as the Corrective Reading program) should first be attempted, with the caveat that close and continuous monitoring of progress occurs.

Snowling, Goulandis, and Defty (1996) also argue that slowness in reading development of reading disabled students is due to delayed development of clear phonological representations at the beginning reading stage. Others (e.g., Bruck, 1990, 1992; Shankweiler et al., 1996) have noted that delay may be an inappropriate description, as untreated, such problems remain in evidence through to adulthood. In the self-teaching hypothesis described by Share (1995) rapid, whole word reading (enabled through direct lexical access) develops through the effects of practice, effects accumulating each time the phonological coding of words occurs. This sequence (of reliable phonological representations allowing phonological decoding, a skill further promoting direct lexical access) provides both an explanation and an intervention focus to overcome the limits placed on children’s reading development by problems at the level of phonology.

In summary, the theory of phonological representation implies that phonological processes are dependent upon the clarity or accessibility of such representations. If phonological processes improve during an intervention program, is it because of better clarity of representations? Several studies have noted improvements in phonological processes when phonemic awareness development approaches are adopted.

Intervention Studies

Lovett et al. (1994) noted improved phonological processing skills (both speech and print based) in reading disabled children following a program adapted from those used here. The improvements were noted in measures of blending, segmenting, reading and spelling. Foorman et al. (1997) reported a study that compared a Direct Instruction model to both an embedded phonics, and a Whole Language approach. The students in the Direct Instruction group demonstrated significantly greater gains in word reading, phonological processing and spelling than the other two groups.

Torgesen et al. (1994) studied 244 students from kindergarten through to the second grade and noted that there were reciprocal effects of pre-reading (letter knowledge) on the subsequent phonological development of their students. Although their study began earlier in the students’ career and was of longer duration, their students were similar to those this thesis. The authors noted the strongest effect of such knowledge on phonemic awareness, moderate effects on rapid naming and no discernible effects for phonological memory.

The most common interpretation of such findings is that emphasis on the structure of words increases the quality or accessibility of phonological representations, and such change is represented in improved performance on the other phonological variables. If, as they relate to reading, naming and working memory are reflective of an underlying variable (representation), there may be little value in attempting to influence these two variables through direct training of them.

If these two phonological processes are simply marker variables for representation, their usefulness is not diminished as they may have an important function as early predictors of students at-risk (Badian, 1994; Hurford et al., 1994). Indeed, combinations of tests emphasising phonological processes, given prior to reading instruction, have been very successful in predicting reading progress.

Phonological representations and short term auditory memory

In the phoneme oddity task assessed with such phonemic awareness tasks as the Test of Phonological awareness (TOPA), memory load is reduced through the provision of pictures to remind students of each of the four words presented. Nevertheless, in order to note which two words (in the end-sound-same subtest) or three words (end-sound-different subtest) share the same final phoneme they must be able to keep the representations active in working memory for sufficient time to note and compare the final phonemes. Hence, it seems likely that phonological working memory plays at least some part in successfully completing the TOPA, and additionally, in the tasks of sequencing and blending important in decoding unfamiliar words, or pseudo-words (Troia, Roth, & Yeni-Komshien, 1996). Swanson and Alexander (1997) in their study of learning disabled readers noted that working memory contributed only 4% to pseudo-word decoding.

Brady (1991) pondered whether there is a threshold phonological working memory capacity necessary for success at such tasks. For children who struggle with phonemic awareness, blending and sequencing, and who also perform poorly on short term memory tasks, the question arises as to the optimum foci for intervention. If phonological working memory underpins the other tasks, perhaps it should be an intervention target in its own right. During the 1960’s and 1970’s the approach known as the ability training model espoused training memory (along with other presumed underlying processes such as visual perception and motor skills). Despite much research energy expended in this field, results were unsatisfactory (Arter & Jenkins, 1979). Whilst performance on those specifically taught tasks may have improved, there was little or no transfer to the reading task. On the other hand, the literature is replete with examples in which training in phoneme awareness subsequently aided reading and spelling. For example, Gillam and Van Kleeck (1996) reported a study in which pre-school aged children with speech and language disorders improved both in phonemic awareness and phonological working memory following a phonemic awareness training program. Further, they noted that children with poor initial phonological working memory were as responsive to the intervention as were those with better phonological working memory. These findings provide support for the notion that a better understanding of the structure of words (perhaps leads to improved representational clarity) has a positive impact across the range of phonological processes. It also suggests that students with an under-developed phonological working memory should not be precluded from participating in phonemic awareness programs or phonics-based instruction.

Ehri (1994) suggests part of the mechanism in her Amalgamation theory. When alphabetic readers practise reading specific words by phonologically recoding the words, they form access routes for those words into memory. Readers build these access routes by using their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences to amalgamate letters-in-spellings to phonemes-in-pronunciations of the words. The letters are processed as visual symbols for the phonemes and the sequence of letters is retained in memory as an alphabetic, phonological representation of the word.

Given that the contribution of phonological recoding in working memory to developing word attack skills is relatively small compared with that of phonemic awareness (Bowey, 1996), then instructional emphasis on directly stimulating phonemic awareness may present a more productive target than that on working memory.

How best and most efficiently to stimulate phonemic awareness in all students is the big question. Some students have no difficulty at all; sometimes arriving at school with such skills already well developed through home-based activities and a ready proclivity. Some, without early experiences but with such proclivity, quickly discover the logic in written word construction whether it is explained or not. Their attention to written word-parts transfers to word-part exploration in oral language, and you may hear them playing word-structure games, such as Spoonerisms or Pig Latin. Others have their phonemic awareness readily stimulated by even the minimal attention to word parts in reading programs with an implicit phonics approach. Some have their phonemic awareness stimulated by the more explicit and systematic phonemic awareness activities included in synthetic phonics programs.

Note that there is an increasing level of teacher and curriculum importance as the student’s contribution to phonemic awareness development diminishes. At the most extreme level are those students who do not bring phonemic awareness to the reading task, and who appear resistant to developing such awareness through related phonics activities. It is those students for whom a dedicated phonemic awareness program, carefully structured and systematically presented, may be particularly beneficial as a precursor to intensive synthetics phonics. Even then, it seems that to promote generalisation to the reading task, relating the sounds in words to their letter correspondences is quite important (Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994, 1995; Schneider, Roth, & Ennemoser, 2000).

The problem at a system level is to know which students require which level of assistance. Assessment of phonological processes can assist in this decision making. Phonemic awareness screening of young students has been shown to be highly predictive of future reading success or failure (Badian, 1994; Hurford, Schauf, Bunce, Blaich, & Moore, 1994). Not all students who do not do well on such tests genuinely require such assistance, but nor are they harmed by it. Besides the cost of over-inclusiveness is not nearly as serious as that of under-inclusiveness. Provide a phonemic awareness activities program in preschool or kindergarten to all, or at least to those adjudged as possibly at risk, and be especially vigilant to those displaying a resistance to skill development. They may well require more systematic instruction than that provided by most published phonemic awareness programs (Snider, 1995). For some design principles, see Chard and Dickson, 1999.

Assess the other phonological processes - those students with deficits in more than one area are likely to be more resistant to progress than those with one problem area (Bowers & Wolf, 1993). Be prepared for intensive assistance over a longer period of time (Torgesen, et al., 1994) with these students - too often efforts are prematurely discontinued for those students in greatest need. Progress may be slow and hard earned, but attention to detail in instruction and vastly increased opportunities for practice can make a great difference to the prognosis. The lesson to be learned from assessment of student’s phonological processing is not about identifying learner characteristics to account for lack of progress, but rather to assist the discerning of which students demand of us our cutting-edge best interventions.

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Dr Kerry Hempenstall Senior Lecturer Department of Psychology and Disability Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Plenty Rd., Bundoora, Victoria, Australia. 3083. Ph (61) 9925 7522 Fax (63) 9925 7303 New Webpage Address -