Perception and awareness of phonemes in phonologically impaired children

Fourteen phonologically impaired children and 14 normally speaking controls were given tests of speech discrimination, in which they had to distinguish between similar phonemes, and tasks of rhyme judgement and matching words on the basis of their initial phoneme, which require the child to identify the same sounds across differing word contexts. Compared to the control group, children with phonological impairment were poor on the phoneme discrimination tasks, but there was wide variation in performance and seven of these children scored near ceiling levels. All children showed some ability to discriminate contrasts they could not produce. Substantial deficits were found in the ability of phonologically impaired children to identify phoneme constancy across differing word contexts. It is difficult to explain such findings in terms of impaired auditory discrimination. Results are discussed in relation to normal phonological development, and it is suggested that phonologically impaired children do not progress to the stage of analysing words at the level of the phoneme.