Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

How does phonological awareness relate to nonword reading skill amongst poor readers?

  • Published:
Reading and Writing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This study examined phonological awareness at the level of phonemes and rhyme and related this to nonword naming ability. Poor readers were compared with 11 year old chronological-age controls and 8 year old reading-age controls. The poor reader group was impaired for chronological age in all tasks, and impaired for reading age at nonword naming and phoneme deletion. The poor readers' rhyming skills, however, were commensurate with reading age. Individual variation was observed together with exceptions to the group findings; most poor readers performed within the range of the reading-age controls on the phonological tasks and in nonword naming. Dissociations in phonological skills were evident, including indications that intact awareness of rhyme may not be a prerequisite for the development of phoneme awareness. Furthermore, phoneme awareness correlated significantly with poor readers' word and nonword reading ability, whereas rhyming skill did not. Therefore, phoneme awareness may be more important than rhyming skill in understanding reading disorders.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baddeley, A.D. (1989). Working memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baddeley, A.D., Ellis, N.C., Miles, T.R. & Lewis, V.J. (1982). Developmental and acquired dyslexia: A comparison, Cognition 11: 185–199.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beech, J.R. & Harding, L.M. (1984). Phonemic processing and the poor reader from a developmental lag viewpoint, Reading Research Quarterly 19: 357–366.

    Google Scholar 

  • Besner, D., Twilley, L., McCann, R.S. & Seergobin, K. (1990). On the association between connectionism and the data: Are a few words necessary?, Psychological Review 97: 432–446.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boder, E. (1973). Developmental dyslexia: A diagnostic approach based on three atypical reading-spelling patterns, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology 15: 663–687.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, L. & Bryant, P.E. (1978). Difficulties in auditory organisation as a possible cause of reading backwardness, Nature 271: 746–747.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruck, M. (1992). Persistence of Dyslexics' phonological awareness deficits, Developmental Psychology 28: 874–886.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryant, P.E. & Impey, L. (1986). The similarities between normal readers and developmental and acquired dyslexics, Cognition 24: 121–137.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryant, P.E., MacLean, M., Bradley, L.L. & Crossland, J. (1990). Rhyme and alliteration, phoneme detection, and learning to read, Developmental Psychology 26: 429–438.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, R. & Butterworth, B. (1985). Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia in a highly literate subject: A developmental case with associated deficits of phonemic processing and awareness, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 37A: 435–475.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caramazza, A. (1986). On drawing inferences about the structure of normal cognitive systems from the analysis of patterns of impaired performance: The case for single-patient studies, Brain and Cognition 5: 41–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll, J.B., Davies, P. & Richman, B. (1971). Word frequency book. New York: American Heritage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castles, A. & Coltheart, M. (1993). Varieties of developmental dyslexia, Cognition 47: 149–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simple reading tasks. In: G. Underwood (ed.), Strategies of information processing (pp. 151–216). London: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coltheart, M. (1984). Acquired dyslexias and normal reading. In: R.N. Malatesha & H.A. Whitaker (eds.), Dyslexia: A global issue (pp. 357–373). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coltheart, M. (1987). Varieties of developmental dyslexia: A comment on Bryant & Impey, Cognition 27: 97–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coltheart, M., Masterson, J., Byng, S., Prior, M. & Riddoch, M.J. (1983). Surface dyslexia, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology35A: 469–495.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiBenedetto, B., Richardson, E. & Kochnower, J. (1983). Vowel generalization in normal and learning disabled readers, Journal of Educational Psychology 75: 576–582.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncan, L.G., Seymour, P.H.K. & Hill, S. (1997). How important are rhyme and analogy in beginning reading?, Cognition 63: 171–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehri, L.C. (1987). Learning to read and spell words, Journal of Reading Behaviour 19: 5–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehri, L.C. (1992). Reconceptualizing the development of sight word reading and its relationship to recoding. In: P. Gough, L.C. Ehri & R. Treiman (eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 107–143). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehri, L.C. & Wilce, L.S. (1980). The influence of orthography on readers' conceptualisation of the phonemic structure of words, Applied Psycholinguistics 1: 371–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, A.W. (1985). The cognitive neuropsychology of developmental (and acquired) dyslexia: A critical survey, Cognitive Neuropsychology 2: 169–205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox, B. & Routh, D.K. (1980). Phonemic analysis and synthesis as word attack skills: Revisited, Journal of Educational Psychology 76: 1059–1064.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frith, U. (1985). Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In: K.E. Patterson, J.C. Marshall & M. Coltheart(eds.), Surface dyslexia: Neuropsychological and cognitive studies of phonological reading (pp. 301–330). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frith, U. & Snowling, M. (1983). Reading for meaning and reading for sound in autistic and dyslexic children, British Journal of Developmental Psychology 1: 329–342.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gelder, B.de & Vroomen, J. (1991). Phonological deficits: Beneath the surface of reading acquisition problems, Psychological Research 53: 88–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glushko, R.J. (1979). The organisation and activation of orthographic knowledge in reading aloud, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 5: 674–691.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gombert, J.E. (1992). Metalinguistic development. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goswami, U. (1993). Toward an interactive analogy model of reading development: Decoding vowel graphemes in beginning reading, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 56:443–475.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goswami, U. & Bryant, P.E. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holligan, C. & Johnston, R.S. (1988). The use of phonological information by good and poor readers in memory and reading tasks, Memory and Cognition 16: 522–532.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holligan, C. & Johnston, R.S. (1991). Spelling errors and phonemic segmentation ability: The nature of the relationship, Journal of Reading Research 14: 21–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hulme, C., Snowling, M. & Quinlan, P. (1991). Connectionism and learning to read: Steps towards a psychologically plausible model, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3: 159–168.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, R.S. (1983). Developmental deep dyslexia, Cortex 19: 133–139.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, R.S., Anderson, M. & Duncan, L.G. (1994). The association between reading strategies in poor readers and their visual and phonological segmentation skills. In: M.J. Riddoch & G.W. Humphreys (eds.), Cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive rehabilitation (pp. 401–423). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, R.S., Anderson, M. & Holligan, C. (1994). Learning letters of the alphabet may give children an insight into the phonemic structure of words. Unpublished study, University of St Andrews.

  • Johnston, R.S., Anderson, M., Perrett, D.I. & Holligan, C. (1990). Perceptual dysfunction in poor readers: Evidence for visual and auditory segmentation problems in a sub-group of poor readers, British Journal of Educational Psychology 60: 212–219.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, R.S., Rugg, M.D. & Scott, T. (1987). The influence of phonology on good and poor readers when reading for meaning, Journal of Memory and Language 26: 57–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kay, J. & Marcel, A.J. (1981). One process, not two, in reading aloud: Lexical analogies do the work of nonlexical rules, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 33A: 397–413.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kochnower, J., Richardson, E. & DiBenedetto, B. (1983). A comparison of the phonic decoding ability of normal and learning disabled children, Journal of Learning Disabilities 16: 348–351.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laxon, V.J., Coltheart, V. & Keating, G.C. (1988). Children find friendly words friendly too: Words with many orthographic neighbours are easier to read and spell, British Journal of Educational Psychology 58: 103–119.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laxon, V.J., Masterson, J. & Coltheart, V. (1991). Some bodies are easier to read: The effect of consistency and regularity on children's reading, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 43A: 793–824.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liberman, I.Y., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, A.M., Fowler, C. & Fischer, F.W. (1977). Phonetic segmentation and recoding in the beginning reader. In: A.S. Reber & D.L. Scarborough (eds.), Toward a Psychology of Reading (pp. 207–225). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lundberg, I. & Høien, T. (1990). Patterns of information processing skills and word recognition strategies in developmental dyslexia, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 34: 231–240.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manis, F.R., Custodio, R. & Szeszulski, P.A. (1993). Development of phonological and orthographic skill: A 2–year longitudinal study of dyslexic children, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 56: 64–86.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, A.E. (1959). A factor analysis of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children, British Journal of Educational Psychology 29: 237–241.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morais, J. (1991). Phonological awareness: A bridge between language and literacy. In: D. Sawyer & B. Fox (eds.), Phonological awareness in reading: The evolution of current perspectives (pp. 31–71). Berlin/New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morais, J., Alegria, J. & Content, A. (1987). The relationship between segmental analysis and alphabetic literacy: An interactive view, Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 7: 415–438.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muter, V. (1994). Influence of phonological awareness and letter knowledge on beginning reading and spelling. In: C. Hulme & M. Snowling (eds.), Reading development and dyslexia (pp. 45–62). London: Whurr.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, R.K., Kliegl, R., Davidson, B.J. & Foltz, G. (1985). Individual and developmental differences in reading disability. In: G.E. MacKinnon & T.G. Waller (eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice, Vol. 4(pp.1–64). New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, R.K., Wise, B., Conners, F.A. & Rack, J.P. (1990). Organisation, heritability, and remediation of component word recognition and language skills in disabled readers. In: T.H. Carr & B.A. Levy (eds.), Reading and its development: Component skills approaches (pp. 261–322). New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, R.K., Wise, B., Conners, F.A., Rack, J.P. & Fulker, D. (1989). Specific deficits in component reading and language skills: Genetic and environmental influences, Journal of Learning Disabilities 22: 339–348.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perfetti, C., Beck, I., Bell, L.C. & Hughes, C. (1987). Phonemic knowledge and learning to read are reciprocal: Longitudinal study of first grade children, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 33: 283–319.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perin, D. (1983). Phonemic segmentation and spelling, British Journal of Psychology 74: 129–144.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rack, J.P. (1985). Orthographic and phonetic coding in developmental dyslexia,British Journal of Psychology 76: 325–340.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rack, J.P., Snowling, M.J. & Olson, R.K. (1992). The nonword reading deficit in developmental dyslexia: A review, Reading Research Quarterly 27: 28–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seidenberg, M. & McClelland, J. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming.Psychological Review 96: 523–568.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seymour, P.H.K. (1986). Cognitive analysis of dyslexia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seymour, P.H.K. (1990). Developmental dyslexia. In: M.W. Eysenck (ed.), Cognitive psychology: An international review (pp. 135–196). Chichester: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seymour, P.H.K. (1994). Variability in dyslexia. In: C. Hulme & M. Snowling (eds.), Reading Development and Dyslexia (pp. 65–85). London: Whurr.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seymour, P.H.K. & Evans, H.M. (1994). Levels of phonological awareness and learning to read, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6: 221–250.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seymour, P.H.K. & Evans, H.M. (submitted). Foundation level dyslexias, Cognitive Neuropsychology.

  • Shallice, T. (1979). Case-study approach in neuropsychological research, Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology 1: 183–211.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shallice, T. (1988). From neuropsychology to mental structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Siegel, L.S. & Ryan, E.B. (1988). Development of grammatical sensitivity, phonological, and short-term memory skills in normally achieving and learning disabled children, Developmental Psychology 24: 28–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snowling, M. (1981). Phonemic deficits in developmental dyslexia, Psychological Research 43: 219–234.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snowling, M. (1987). Dyslexia: A cognitive developmental perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snowling, M. & Hulme, C. (1989). A longitudinal case study of developmental phonological dyslexia, Cognitive Neuropsychology 6: 379–401.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snowling, M., Stackhouse, J. & Rack, J. (1986). Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia: A developmental analysis, Cognitive Neuropsychology 3: 309–339.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stuart, M. (1990). Processing strategies in a phoneme deletion task, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 42A: 305–327.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stuart, M. & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in a sequence of stages?, Cognition 30: 139–181.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szeszulski, P.A. & Manis, F.R. (1987). A comparison of word recognition processes in dyslexic and normal readers at two reading age levels, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 44: 364–376.

    Google Scholar 

  • Temple, C.M. & Marshall, J.C. (1983). A case study of developmental phonological dyslexia, British Journal of Psychology 74: 517–533.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, R. (1987). On the relationship between phonological awareness and literacy, Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 7: 524–529.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, R. (1992). The role of intrasyllabic units in learning to read and spell. In: P. Gough, L.C. Ehri & R. Treiman (eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 65–106). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, R., Goswami, U. & Bruck, M. (1990). Not all nonwords are alike: Implications for reading development and theory, Memory and Cognition 18: 559–567.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, R. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1985). Are there qualitative differences between dyslexic and normal readers?, Memory and Cognition 13: 357–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • van IJzendoorn, M.H. & Bus, A.G. (1994).Meta-analytic confirmation of the nonword reading deficit in developmental dyslexia, Reading Research Quarterly 29: 266–275.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vellutino, F.R. & Scanlon, D.M. (1987). Phonological coding, phonological awareness, and reading ability: Evidence from a longitudinal and experimental study, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 33: 321–363.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagner, R.K. & Torgesen, J.K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills, Psychological Bulletin 101: 192–212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilding, J. (1990). Developmental dyslexics do not fit in boxes: Evidence from six new case studies, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 2: 97–131.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yopp, H.K. (1988). The validity and reliability of phonemic awareness tests, Reading Research Quarterly 23: 159–177.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland

    Lynne G. Duncan

  2. School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK

    Rhona S. Johnston

Authors
  1. Lynne G. Duncan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Rhona S. Johnston
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Duncan, L.G., Johnston, R.S. How does phonological awareness relate to nonword reading skill amongst poor readers?. Reading and Writing 11, 405–439 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007923313914

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007923313914

Search

Navigation