Phonological Coding, Phonological Awareness, and Reading Ability: Evidence from a Longitudinal and Experimental Study.

Abstract

Two studies are reported that provide correlational and experimental evidence for causal relationships between linguistic coding deficits and reading disability. Convergent evidence of three different types is presented as documentation that deficiencies in phonological coding and phonemic segmentation are a direct cause of deficiencies in word identification: (a) evidence from a longitudinal study demonstrating the predictive validity of phonemic segmentation ability, (b) evidence from a training study demonstrating that training in phonemic segmen tation and alphabetic mapping had a salutary effect on a task simulating word identification and code acquisition, and (c) evidence from normal and poor read ers, matched for reading ability, demonstrating comparable levels of perfor mance on a large number of tasks presumed to be highly dependent on phonol ogical coding ability. It was concluded that phonologic coding deficits constitute a major source of reading difficulty in beginning readers, although there was suggestive evidence that semantic and syntactic deficits also may cause such dif ficulty.